by D. B. John
“Drop your weapons to the ground,” she yelled into the wind.
No one moved, and she wondered how many of them understood Korean.
She fired another shot into the ground in front of them, sending up a blast of gravel. They raised their hands to their eyes.
“Drop your weapons or the next shot takes out a kneecap and the one after that puts a hole in a lung!”
Slowly they took out their handguns and dropped them.
“Lie down on the ground. Facedown.”
They got down onto their knees.
“My darling sister,” Jenna whispered, without lowering her aim, “please collect their weapons.”
The men must have thought they were in a strange dream. A North Korean woman from the Dear Leader’s personal train was floating among the rocks and ice like a lady from a folktale, picking up their weapons, unmanning them, while the train had passed in flames toward the horizon.
One minute later Jenna and Soo-min were strapped into the seats of the Volkswagen, driving off fast over the wilderness toward Yanji.
Jenna was coming down off the high she’d experienced on the train. The meth was wearing off. She was returning to steel-plated field-agent mode, calculating probabilities, her mind probing ahead for danger.
She felt the vast volume of questions she had for Soo-min building up like pressure behind a dam, but questions could wait until they reached Shenyang. All she could do now was glance occasionally at her sister’s profile as she drove. She could not believe the miracle of her sister’s presence next to her. Soo-min, Susie. So much to say to her and all the time in the world to say it. Soo-min just stared at the road, eyes limpid and glassy, saying nothing, breathing in short, shallow huffs. Jenna recognized the symptoms of shock.
Somewhere near the city limits of Yanji she threw the AKSU and the handguns into a field and accelerated up the entrance road toward the expressway. The police would be tracking the car by transponder once the alarm was raised, so they abandoned the vehicle in the bus station of Changchun at 11:15 p.m. There Jenna hired, for a generous fare, a taxi off the street to drive them the rest of the journey to Shenyang.
54
The G1212 Shenyang-Jilin Expressway
Ninety Kilometers East of Meihekou
Jilin Province, China
Cho had been driving for about two hours. He felt rested and alert, if a little hungry. He’d found no snacks in the minivan and dared not visit a service station. His biggest worry was having to stop at an expressway tollgate—the obvious place for the police to trap him. The alarm had surely been raised back in Yanji by now. But there were no tollgates on this expressway, just yellow signs for ELECTRONIC TOLL COLLECTION. He had turned off the satnav but couldn’t shake the feeling that he was still being tracked. Lieutenant Wang’s wallet held a small amount of cash. Cho had already resolved to ditch the vehicle in the next city, Meihekou, which he’d reach in an hour or so, and buy a bus ticket for the rest of the way to Shenyang. He’d have to find a change of clothes. They’d be on the lookout for the police uniform.
Worry about that later.
He was traveling westward through the foothills of the Changbai Mountains. The expressway curved and undulated through the landscape, now and then crossing a suspension bridge that spanned a deep valley gorge. What a bleak province Jilin was in winter. A murky orange glow behind the mountains to the left was all that remained of the daylight. It looked like a chemical reaction. Thick snow blanketed the hills, now pale gray in the gloom. To his right he saw the lights and flares of a vast shale oil refinery and caught its toxic stench.
The road unrolled endlessly from the dark. It had been gritted and salted but was still icy at the edges. He gripped the wheel tighter. Traffic was sparse, and speeding. A giant truck overtook him, rocking him in its slipstream, spraying him with brown slush. He dared not go faster, dared not give the highway patrols any reason to stop him.
He turned on the radio. Some music would calm him. A Chinese girl band, playing something state approved on zithers and xiaos. His bandaged calf was beginning to throb painfully again. He took another oxycodone capsule from his shirt pocket, forced it down without water, and once again distracted himself with thoughts of his son.
There was not one hour of one day during his months in Camp 22 when he had not thought of his boy. Books, his only child, his little man. What was the joke behind the nickname? Cho wished he could remember. He pictured the upturned little face with the cute grin. The puzzle book that always seemed to be in his hands. An innocent kid who loved animals. In the dim reflection of the mirror, Cho caught himself smiling and saw his eyes swimming with tears. He would give anything to know what had happened to Books. The smile faded from his face. He would never, ever know. The chance that he might be dead was too terrible to consider, though it had haunted him in dreams. Cho did not really believe his son was dead. But it was unimaginable that he’d been allowed to return to Pyongyang. Had he been told to despise and condemn his father as a traitor? Almost certainly. Would he believe it? Cho hoped not. He hoped his boy would keep the truth in some corner of his heart that the Party would never find, and this comforted him. He believed his son had a child’s insight into his old father that no other adult had. Of the boy’s mother, however, Cho was more certain. Intuition told him that they’d got to her quickly. In fact, he had started losing her long before his fall, and it surprised him to realize that he only saw that now. How she must loathe him. How she must curse the day she had ever met him.
It was curious, but whenever he tried to picture the three of them as the family they might have been, happy together, posing for a photograph on the seaside at Wonsan in summer, perhaps, or in another life, somewhere else entirely, in New York City, with the Statue of Liberty behind them, it was not his wife’s face he always saw next to him, but Jenna’s.
Jenna, who had crossed the world to rescue him, a wretched nobody who had lost everything. A husk of a man. She did not know that he knew her real name.
He shook his head gently. To have the freedom to love a woman like that … he dared not imagine it.
He tried to think where she could be now, and felt worry gather in his chest like heartburn. He hoped she was unharmed. The Chinese had secret prisons, black sites invisible to the West, where there were no rules for interrogating spies. But he reminded himself that she was an American citizen. That in itself conferred magical protection. She came from a universe governed by laws and human rights. They could not mistreat her, as they could him. Somehow, she would be all right.
Cho glanced in the mirror again. The headlights of a lone car were some distance behind him, driving at the same speed. Was it following him? It had been there a long time.
Between patches of fast-moving snow cloud he saw the pinpricks of tiny cold stars. A bright half-moon was rising, its light turning the snow a dull blue. The whole firmament was above him, revolving, indifferent, and this thought made him feel very small, and his problems irrelevant. His brother was dead. His dear mother, who had never stopped loving him or believing in him, was almost certainly dead, too. What was he but a temporary assemblage of atoms, impermanent, like everything else. He would go the way of all things. The world would spin without him. No one would remember him.
He had not noticed the moment at which the oncoming traffic on the other side of the barrier had stopped. All lanes heading in the opposite direction were empty. An accident up ahead?
Then something flashed in his mirror, and he saw the lights, about two kilometers behind him.
He couldn’t tell what it was at first. A broad mass of multicolored lights, like some sinister fairground attraction, was keeping its distance but creeping closer, until he saw that the lone car following him had been joined by three others, moving abreast, one in each lane, with more following behind, all with headlights on full beam and hazard lights blinking, and red and blue emergency lights rotating, a silent bank of approaching light.
He felt no surp
rise or fear.
Cho turned off the music on the radio. Now there was just the hum of the engine, the rumbling of the wind, and the distant rotors of a helicopter, drawing nearer until he could make out the rhythm of its blades. He glanced up through the sunroof but couldn’t see it.
The few cars on the road ahead of him were pulling over onto the hard shoulder.
The next moment he was blinded. A stark white beam from above was upon him, moving with him, illuminating him in the minivan’s interior like the ray of a magnifying glass on a hapless ant. He had the sensation of being suspended in the gliding pool of light. He tried to keep his eyes on the road.
Cho smiled faintly to himself.
So, they were taking no chances. He had incapacitated two policemen, after all, and had stolen Wang’s belt and holster with its Type 92 service handgun. He was an armed criminal fugitive.
He felt remarkably calm. His breathing was steady.
The expressway was cresting a low hill. He put his foot down and accelerated. The police cars behind him increased their speed.
On the other side of the hill he saw the trap. At the end of a long bridge was a roadblock with dozens of police cars, lights strobing. The bridge spanned another valley gorge. In the blinding glare he couldn’t see how deep it was. Finally, he took his foot off the gas pedal.
Toward the middle of the bridge he stopped. He turned off the engine, and sat still for a while. The helicopter’s flapping was very loud now, directly above him. The bridge around him was bathed in a blue-white glare, like a stage set. The phalanx of police cars behind him had also stopped, at a safe distance near entry to the bridge.
A metallic voice overhead blared, “This is the People’s Armed Police. Step out of the vehicle, with your hands in the air.”
The amplified voice did not bounce or echo. It was swallowed by the dark, and Cho sensed that the drop beneath the bridge was very deep.
He exhaled slowly. Never had he felt so alive, so present in the moment. So … at peace.
Of all the endings offered to him since his troubles began, this, he knew, was the right one. The one he was destined to take. Perhaps nothing he had done in his life could have changed this ending. There were no accidents.
Slowly he got out of the car. He stepped onto the road and feebly raised his hands. Lights were trained on him from above, behind, and from in front. Ahead, he saw the silhouettes of helmeted police coming toward him.
“Stay where you are,” thundered the voice from the sky.
He turned and saw them approaching from behind.
His breath made a long plume of white vapor in the freezing air.
He looked up, wanting to see the stars one last time, but the helicopter’s light dazzled him, its downdraft tore at his clothes and hair.
I’m ready, he thought. I’ve been ready for a long time. He dropped his arms.
“Keep your hands raised!”
In four long strides he reached the crash barrier.
“Stay where you are!”
In two stiff movements he had clambered over the barrier railing.
“Halt! Do not move!”
He was holding on to the railing and leaning out over a dark chasm. The breath of night howled through the valley, lacerating his face, numbing his ears, freezing the tears in his eyes. Below he saw empty void. Oh, it was deep enough all right.
It was time to let go.
As he fell, with the wind rushing through his hair, he released all need to understand, all need to know. And in that moment he understood everything.
55
US Consulate
Shenyang
Liaoning Province, China
The guest rooms of the US consulate—a sprawling, concrete Brutalist block—reminded Jenna of an East German budget hotel, but she had never minded hard beds. Soo-min had barely stopped sleeping since they’d arrived here, on edge and exhausted, at three in the morning twelve hours ago.
It had pained Jenna to report to the CIA station chief that she had failed in her mission, that she had lost Cho Sang-ho, the most significant North Korean asset ever to attempt defection. If not for him, the truth about the rocket program might never have been discovered. But when she had recounted the events on Kim Jong-il’s train in a Flash Critical report sent to Charles Fisk via JWICS, the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System, the CIA’s own internet for encrypted top-secret communications, Langley’s reaction had surprised her.
She had expected a dressing down for the carnage she had caused, a formal reprimand, a suspension from duty pending an inquiry, but Fisk was impressed. “You refused to be blackmailed and you recovered your sister, an abducted US citizen.” The CIA director was briefed immediately and had been pleased to inform the president of Kim’s death before the news broke. In fact, twenty-four hours after the event, North Korea had still not announced it. “I’m truly sorry about Cho,” Fisk said, “but our immediate priority now, as soon as you’re back, is to debrief Soo-min.”
What?!
Perhaps Jenna had a blind spot for her sister, but she had not seen that coming.
“You said she may have been a member of Kim’s entourage, maybe for years,” Fisk said. “She could be a gold mine of information, and she has inside knowledge of the Seed-Bearing Program. She knows every one of those kids. With her help, we’ll find them.”
And do what to them?
Jenna felt immediately and fiercely protective of Soo-min. It worried her that her twin had said so little during the journey to Shenyang. She had not even asked after her own parents, and Jenna decided to wait until the moment was right to tell her of Douglas’s death. Only once had Jenna seen her exhibit any kind of reaction, when she’d shrunk in terror and hid her face at the sight of the police guards outside the consulate’s gates. Jenna had squeezed her hand and kissed it. “You’ve nothing to be scared of. You’re not a fugitive. You’re an American citizen.” Soo-min had not yet uttered a word in English.
“I’m concerned my sister may be suffering the effects of severe trauma,” Jenna said. “She may not react well to questioning.”
“We have personnel at Langley trained in debriefing assets with PTSD,” Fisk said, and logged off. End of conversation.
Later, lying awake in the guest room, she watched Soo-min breathing gently. Asleep, when her face was soft and in repose, she looked the way Jenna remembered her. But Jenna knew the moment her twin would awake the mask would come back on, and again she would be guarded, watchful, distant. An enigma. She seemed to carry some darkness inside her like a tumor. Jenna had put on the necklace with the tiny silver tiger for Soo-min to see, and waited for her to open her eyes, hoping to catch her unawares.
“Who is Ha-jun?” she said quietly, in Korean. Soo-min did not move, and for a while Jenna thought her sister had willfully not heard her. “You whispered the name in your sleep.
Soo-min sat up then. Her hair fell across her face, but she kept her eyes steadily on Jenna. In a voice barely above a whisper, she said, “My son.”
You have a son? Jenna felt something in her heart give way. “Was he one of the children at the villa?”
Soo-min nodded almost imperceptibly, her face expressionless.
“He’s still there?”
After a pause so long that Jenna thought her sister had permanently returned to silence, Soo-min said, “He was taken from me … when he was eight years old.”
“Why?”
“Many reasons.”
Jenna had a daunting sense then of the vast unexplored subjects ahead of them, like new continents emerging from the mist.
Slowly, haltingly, as if learning a new language, Soo-min began to answer Jenna’s questions. It was as if she were feeling in the dark for mental tools she had long ago discarded, and Jenna saw that this was only a tiny beginning. The process of Soo-min’s return to the world would take time, maybe months, even years.
Disconcertingly, she spoke Korean in the strong accent of the North. For more t
han a year, she said, she and Jae-hoon, the boy from the beach, had been held in a guarded residential complex shared with four Japanese couples who had been kidnapped many years previously. “Our handlers urged us to marry. Jae-hoon is the father of my son.” A regular and menacing presence at the complex, Jenna gathered, was Sin Gwang-su, their abductor. But after Soo-min’s son was born, mother and son were transferred to the villa of the Paekhwawon Compound, and for reasons that were not clear to Jenna, they did not see Jae-hoon again. Soo-min claimed not to know his fate. It was as if her memories that led up to the arrival at the villa still bore the glimmer of a path she could describe, and each time her eyes met Jenna’s, Jenna strongly sensed the magnetism that had always linked her to her twin reaching out, trying to sync, but not quite connecting. Once the story reached the villa, however, all became mystery once again. Whatever her role had been there, she would not say, the secret was locked behind too many doors, but Jenna had seen for herself that Soo-min had had a strong bond with the children there. It couldn’t have been easy to leave them.
Then Jenna said, “Why were you on Kim’s train?” and the light went out of Soo-min’s eyes; she lowered her head, and said no more.
It’s forbidden to speak of the General.
She gave no sign that she recognized the silver necklace.
At dinner the consul said, “You have friends in high places. I just got an e-mail from the secretary of state herself. Your sister will be reissued with a temporary US passport. You’re both out of here tomorrow.”
After that Jenna called her mother and asked her to wait in the arrivals building of Washington Dulles International Airport tomorrow. She gave Han the flight details.
