Star of the North

by D. B. John

  What ill omen was this? Fear breathed on her like a draft of night air.

  Others were noticing the girl, too. They were staring at her and stepping out of her way. Mrs. Moon pinched herself.

  She wasn’t hallucinating.

  Suddenly Mrs. Kwon let out a shriek and ran toward the girl, scooping her up in her arms, and Mrs. Moon snapped out of her trance. The phantom was Sun-i.

  The women sent their customers away. They abandoned their mats. They formed a huddle around the girl, as if protecting a wounded fawn, and moved her beneath the bridge, away from the eyes of customers and the bleat of the loudspeaker.

  The girl began shaking violently. A blanket was thrown around her and hot tea called for. She was wide eyed but not looking or seeing. Mrs. Lee was trying to clean her cheeks with a damp cloth, saying “shush,” though the girl had not uttered a sound. Mrs. Moon cupped the girl’s cheeks in her hands and a flicker of reality came back into the eyes.

  “Ajumma …”

  She had lovely bow-shaped lips, just like her mother. Her voice was pure air and oddly disconnected, as if she were speaking in her sleep. “Where’s my mother?”

  Mrs. Moon glanced at the women. Their faces were appalled.

  She held the girl’s head to her chest, and felt death’s shade on both of them.

  A small head pushed through the women’s aprons and Kyu appeared. Mrs. Moon said, “Find Sergeant Jang and tell him to come here now. Hurry.”

  It wasn’t until later that the women were able to piece together what had happened from the scraps Sun-i could tell them. Outside the house she had struggled free from the Bowibu officer holding her, and had run to the river. They sent the dog after her over the ice. It attacked her and tore at her clothes. Two Chinese men waiting in the darkness on the other side, who may have been smugglers or human traffickers, beat the dog away and helped her up the bank, but she ended up running away from those men, too. She could not explain how she lost her shoes. At first light she crept back across the frozen river in bare feet.

  Sergeant Jang found himself penned in by a wall of stony faces.

  “Curly … was distributing the Bibles? Ajumma … please.” His smile had frozen and his eyes darted about, looking for an escape. “That’s a political crime. Very serious. You’re asking the wrong man.” The women’s expressions did not change. “You have to understand. The Bowibu share no information about those crimes with us. It’s not my business to get involved …’

  Mrs. Lee folded her arms. “I’d say you were a mouse if you weren’t such a great big leech.” She spat a bolus of mucus on the ground. “Always holding out your hand for more, but when it’s a favor we need from you—”

  “How much to bribe the Bowibu?” Mrs. Moon said. “To release her.”

  Sergeant Jang grimaced as if she’d screamed in his ear. He glanced about, but there were no customers in earshot. The loudspeaker was broadcasting a victory concert. Massed choirs singing “We Live in a Powerful Nation.”

  He gave a jittery laugh. “You can’t bribe them.”

  “Everyone has their price in this city. How much?”

  Sergeant Jang’s eyes popped wide and he shook his head. When he spoke he’d acquired a stammer. “They m-might listen to you for, perhaps, ten thousand y-yuan … But you don’t have that kind of m-money … and what happens if they take offense? No, no, no, no …”

  Mrs. Kwon turned to her in dismay. “Ten thousand yuan …”

  Kyu caught Mrs. Moon’s eye and conveyed an idea. His shrug was a question mark.

  The brazier cast its amber light onto the iron beams of the bridge. The women sat around it in a circle. Mrs. Moon was on her feet. “If we use the cooperative to raise half the money between all of us, Kyu will obtain the other half in bingdu.”

  Mrs. Yang said, “Is this going to get us into trouble?”

  “I’ll keep you all out of this,” Mrs. Moon said simply. “There’s no point putting everyone in danger. I will take responsibility for the offer.”

  A murmur of protest spread around the group.

  “For Curly’s sake we must act fast before—” She glanced at Sun-i and checked herself. “—before the authorities reach a decision. Sun-i,” Mrs. Moon said softly, “it’s not safe for you here. Go with Kyu tonight. He will hide you until this blows over.”

  “But who’ll approach the Bowibu?” Grandma Whiskey said. Her yellow tortoise face was poking out from several layers of headscarf.

  “Sergeant Jang will have to find his courage,” Mrs. Moon said, “or I’ll humiliate him and go myself.”

  17

  United Nations Secretariat Building

  East 42nd Street and 1st Avenue

  New York City

  A Fox News crew filmed the motorcade as it arrived at the UN building. Cho’s door opened to a barrage of flashes. Surprised that there were no Yankee police to stop him from speaking, he reiterated Pyongyang’s line for the cameras—“My country does not tolerate illegal incursions of its territorial waters and has acted robustly”—and proceeded into the lobby. He was in high fettle, with his junior diplomats on either side of him and Ambassador Shin following behind. First Secretary Ma was absent for some reason, but Cho had scarcely noticed. The Dear Leader’s eyes shone upon him from the East and had made this happen, just to help him.

  There were no amused faces across the table in front of him at that day’s talks. Now his every word carried the weight of a tank shell. By lunchtime New York time Pyongyang had faxed him the evening’s newspaper headlines—YANKEE JACKALS COWED BY “ATTACK DIPLOMACY!”—together with the Central News Agency’s international press release, describing him, Cho, as a “warrior diplomat” and reporting that the Yankees had come “crawling back to the table, terrified that Comrade Kim Jong-il would draw the treasured sword of the Revolution!” Cho basked in his new authority. He set out his demands. Within hours, O’Brien’s team began alluding to concessions that could be offered to make the crisis disappear. To induce them further, Cho softened his tone. He was generous in victory.

  One shadow marred his day. Where was First Secretary Ma?

  “He’s been detained by important consular business,” Ambassador Shin had said, when Cho asked him. What business was more important than this? Once again Cho’s instinct for plot was roused. Toward the end of the day, when the Americans began firming up their offers and the scale of his triumph was becoming apparent, First Secretary Ma was still nowhere to be seen.

  Cho delivered the good news in a long telephone call to Pyongyang in Ambassador Shin’s office. The Americans were offering even more than the First Deputy Minister had hoped for—thousands of tons of food aid and hundreds of millions of dollars in cash. When he emerged from the office he checked to make sure he was unobserved, and punched the air. He was buoyed with excitement and relief and grinning like a kid. It was time to go home. He hit the button for the elevator, spun around in little dance, the doors opened, and he was face-to-face with O’Brien.

  “Colonel Cho, I was just coming to look for you.”

  Cho stepped in and O’Brien pushed the button for the lobby. Cho looked down and pretended to adjust his cuffs. He had no small talk to make with this man and was thinking that silence would be entirely appropriate when O’Brien turned to him and clasped his elbow in a most familiar manner.

  “We’ve made a small arrangement for cocktails and dinner at a, uh, Manhattan establishment, which I think you’ll like, called the 21 Club …”

  He was smiling warmly—as if nothing of the depth of enmity Cho had conveyed in two days of talks had any effect on a personal rapport.

  “Just a relaxed gathering, to offer you some New York hospitality …”

  The grotesque bourgeois sham of his manners! Cho gently disengaged his grip. His orders in Pyongyang could not have been clearer: under no circumstances was the legation to socialize with the enemy.

  “The delegation of the DPRK regrets that it must decline your invitation,” Cho said
with a bow of his head. “Another time, I hope.”

  O’Brien did a double blink. With a face that grew redder as each floor passed, he said that he was very sorry to hear that, and admitted that he hadn’t expected it, because unfortunately it was too late to decline. The two junior diplomats in Cho’s legation, who’d been waiting for him in the lobby, were already being shepherded into cars outside the main entrance and driven to the venue as he spoke. They’d been told that he, Colonel Cho, would be joining them presently.

  Cho was dumbfounded. “And you didn’t think to ask me first?”

  Two days of bottled frustration were suddenly on O’Brien’s lips. “Jesus Christ, it’s a treat, not an insult!”

  Cho glared at the elevator’s descending digits, which now didn’t seem so swift, fearful that he was about to yell something unbecoming of the dignity of his country.

  “Sorry,” O’Brien muttered, smoothing and resmoothing his sandy hair with his fingers. “I apologize.”

  The doors had not fully opened at lobby level before Cho was running across the vast marble space, drawing the eyes of the security guards. He reached the main exit in seconds and was through to the floodlit concourse, frantically looking left and right down the avenues of flags, his breath forming white billows on the night air. A snaking line of cars with drivers awaited heads of diplomatic missions, ambassadors, and attachés. But of his own staff there was no sign. They’d left.

  His shirt clung icily to the skin of his back. Were the Americans playing a deadly practical joke? He lifted his eyes to the UN tower, blazing with the lights of all nations, and cursed the Yankees in the coarsest language of the army. O’Brien joined him on the curb, panting. His shirt had come untucked from his pants and his tie was askew.

  “This car will take you,” was all he said, indicating a waiting Lexus. A driver was holding the rear door open. Cho looked at O’Brien as upon a foe who’d outclassed him. He had no choice. He got into the car.

  Moments later, as he rested his head against the cold backseat window and gazed at the teeming intersections on Lexington and Park Avenue, he marveled at the twists a life could take. Today he was fêted in Pyongyang. Tomorrow he faced dismissal, or worse. His triumph sabotaged. He felt a rising fury toward O’Brien, who had no understanding of the regime Cho served. It tolerated no slipups. No mistakes.

  A sleety rain began to fall as the car turned into West 52nd Street, making the brownstone buildings dark and glistening. Beneath the sidewalk canopy of the 21 Club a top-hatted doorman was opening an umbrella while police officers held back a small crowd. Quickly Cho felt in his pocket for his lapel pin of the Great Leader’s face and pinned it in his buttonhole—his talisman against American shamanism. If this display of hospitality was calculated to soften him, he’d show them how unyielding he could be.

  The Lexus pulled over, his door was opened. Cameras flashed and voices shouted in the rain.

  “DOWN WITH KIM JONG-IL!” Someone jostled violently in the crowd. “DOWN WITH KIM JONG-IL!”

  Cho was ushered down the steps and into the club, still seeing orange stars from the camera flashes, through a reception area where there stood four solidly built men in suits with radio earphones whom he knew with absolute certainty were American secret police, along a narrow corridor, and into a private dining room. The door closed silently behind him and he found himself in a world to which he’d never truly been admitted before, not even on his missions to Beijing.

  Low, rose-colored lighting reflected in dark paneled walls, on which were hung spotlit paintings of schooners and clippers in sail. A jazz trumpet solo played softly through recessed speakers. Next to a stone fireplace situated at the far end of the room, beyond a long, white-cloth dining table laid with wineglasses and silver, a group of tall, gray-haired men stood talking with booming emphases and wide hand gestures. The offhand ease of power. They stood a little apart from his own Korean staff—the two junior diplomats and two political officers—who looked like a group of refugees, clutching the stems of martini glasses in their fists as though they were trowels. Both groups turned toward him, and their conversation fell to silence. One of the tall American men made a remark that drew chuckles from his group. Cho felt his face burn.

  The door opened again behind him and the broad frame of O’Brien entered, brushing the damp sandy hair from his face and sweating profusely. He seemed annoyed and on edge, but quickly softened his face into a more welcoming expression. As he led Cho toward the tall men, and began to introduce each in turn amid much hand shaking and stares of intense curiosity, Cho understood the reason for O’Brien’s nerves.

  The gathering before him included a world-famous former secretary of state, now slack mouthed and stooped; a senior army general in dark-green dress uniform;

  a Wall Street CEO; … and one former president of the United States. All assembled here this evening to meet him, Cho Sang-ho, a colonel in the Korean People’s Army. He had to compress his lips together to suppress a laugh. What idiots these Yankees were! He was living under a charm. For the second time in a day, his shitty predicament was transformed. This was the honey on the cake of his triumph. Whatever the Americans were intending with this parade of luminaries—a display of power; intimidation; a show of their determination to change his country’s course—they had utterly misjudged the significance of a gathering like this to a mass audience of North Koreans back home. Simply by meeting him these men were abasing themselves before the Dear Leader’s greatness. They were on their faces paying homage. Pyongyang’s propaganda machine would be in overdrive.

  “How d’you do, sir,” the former president said in a hoarse drawl, and peered at Cho’s lapel pin as if it were a second head. A photographer raised a camera to capture the handshake. Cho composed his face coldly. The former president gave a convivial smile; bulbous nose and pinkish-red skin making him seem faintly debauched. His hair was ash white in the camera flash.

  “Mr. Cho, tell me what the hell happened today on Yeonpyeong Island.”

  Cho remembered that the former president had met the Dear Leader and spent time in his presence, and answered the question respectfully.

  “You tell Chairman Kim from me that he’s destabilizing the whole goddamn region …”

  The conversation was joined by the Wall Street CEO, a sharp-nosed man who reminded Cho of a bald eagle with glasses, who asked why North Korea did not open its economy, as the new China had done with such success.

  “The DPRK remains true to the path of socialism,” Cho said, accepting a martini from a tray. “The happiness of our people does not depend on the rapacious pursuit of profits.”

  “Sure, but profits’ll put food in their mouths.”

  Only in the company of the army general, whose eyes regarded him with cool intelligence, was Cho wary. He had been introduced as Charles Fisk.

  “Colonel Cho, I’m here to persuade you that nuclear weapons are not the right path for your country.”

  “General,” Cho said, stirring his martini with the olive on its stick, “what, if not nuclear weapons, would get a small country like mine invited to a place like this for a drink with you this evening?”

  Fisk threw back his head and laughed. A sincere, earthy laugh. “You have a point.”

  At that moment Cho was distracted by the boisterous voice of one of the junior diplomats, who was in conversation with O’Brien. He caught the diplomat’s eye, flashing him a warning just in time to stop the man accepting a second martini.

  “Tell me,” Fisk said, moving in closer to Cho. “These long-range missiles you’ve got dressed up and disguised as satellite rockets …”

  Cho felt the hairs rise on the nape of his neck.

  “… What are you hoping to arm them with?”

  Was this man was provoking him?

  “Forgive my question,” Fisk said. “I’m merely curious.” He smiled in apology, but his eyes were cold and there was a current of contempt in his voice.

  Cho inflated his chest
. “We assert our absolute right to a peaceful space program.”

  “Well.” Fisk took a sip of his drink and turned to face the room. “Maybe I’m worrying about nothing. Perhaps it’s something entirely innocent you’re cooking up in that shiny new laboratory …”

  Cho stared at Fisk. He was being treated with insolence. And he had no idea what this man was talking about.

  “Ah!” Fisk’s eyes were smiling over Cho’s shoulder. “At last.”

  A slender woman in a dark velvet cocktail dress joined them. Her skin seemed almost African American to Cho, and beautiful, too, but her hair and eyes were Asian. The narrow dress complimented her, though no Korean woman would bare her shoulders so immodestly.

  Fisk began to introduce her, but she had already dropped a cool hand into Cho’s and explained, in pitch-perfect North Korean dialect, that she worked for General Fisk as a special adviser.

  “I am Marianne Lee.”

  18

  The 21 Club

  West 52nd Street

  New York City

  As the guests found their places on either side of the dining table, Jenna saw a momentary discomfiture on Colonel Cho’s face. He was not being seated next to the former president or the former secretary of state, but toward the end of the table, opposite Jenna, and away from his staff. She slipped her handbag off her shoulder and gave him a brilliant smile, which he returned with a bemused look, unsure if he was being flattered or snubbed.

  A piano arrangement of “’Round Midnight” played in the background. The lights dimmed, casting a luxurious glow onto the tablecloth and silverware. A maître d’ wearing a radio earphone ushered in waitresses in black trouser suits who began pouring wine into each glass on the table, leaning in between guests with balletic poise.

  Fisk was abiding by the calculation that the more convivial the atmosphere, the greater the chances of the North Koreans relaxing their guard and revealing the mind of the man in Pyongyang who, with a brute and brilliant timing, had triggered the release of hundreds of millions of dollars from the US government in return for calling off a brief, manufactured crisis, and who had demonstrated a shocking will to strike without provocation. The surprise attack on Yeonpyeong Island had set alarms ringing from Tokyo to Washington. Within forty minutes of the news breaking, Fisk, at an excruciating meeting in the White House Situation Room, had been obliged to admit the CIA’s intelligence failure to the commander in chief in person, who had come from a black-tie reception, glass in hand, and listened to Fisk with a decided coolness.