“White rock,” whispered the inmate when I came close to him.
I took a few more steps, then spotted the rock he was talking about. I dropped down as if to tie my shoe.
“They don’t care,” said the inmate, pretending to rake near my part of the fence. His English was heavily accented, and I had trouble making out the words. “Follow the directions.”
The directions consisted of numbers—0000—and letters—NE fenc—penciled onto the flat bottom of the rock. Terse, but decipherable: I was to meet someone at midnight, at the northeast corner of the yard or fence.
Or maybe the corner of the compound. Or maybe someplace named “fenc” that I didn’t know about.
I started to slip the rock into my pocket.
“Leave it,” hissed the inmate. “Go.”
I put the stone back and started trotting again. The guards were still passing their lone cigarette back and forth, gazing off into the distance. Obviously they’d been paid off—unless this was a setup. I pumped my legs harder as I considered the situation. Had Trace sent the message? The letters didn’t seem to be in her handwriting, but they’d been so faint and small that it was hard to tell. If it wasn’t Trace, who was it? Some inmate who had the run of the place? How did he or she know English?
North Korea has a variety of prisons, concentration camps, and villages of exile where people in need of political reform—read, anyone the regime or some other government bully doesn’t like—are sent for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation can include the entire family and take a lifetime or two. As you’d expect, informal governments among the prisoners are fairly common, and in some cases are more powerful than the formal structure—until, of course, the guards get the guns out. I guessed that whoever had left the message wanted to meet with me and tell me how things worked. Which was fine with me.
As I completed my fifth circuit of the yard, the guards finished smoking. One whistled loudly, and together they walked toward the entrance to the building, expecting me to follow. I jogged to the building. Just inside I was stopped and searched for contraband by a third man—rocks, presumably.
“I’d like to talk to the woman that came in with me,” I told the officer as he patted me down. “I want to see her. Trace Dahlgren.”
The man gave me a quizzical look.
“Trace?” I said.
He made a face. I tried gesturing, making the shape of a woman with my hands, but they didn’t understand that either. Finally, I just yelled, “Trace!”
This did get a response—the men who’d escorted me to the courtyard grabbed me and threw me against the wall. I pushed one of them away, but before I could get the other one off of me, the man who’d searched me began hitting me with a baton. I started to wrestle it away from him when I felt something prick my side. Before I could do anything else, my body convulsed. I didn’t feel any real pain, though, until after I’d hit the floor. Then however many volts they’d tasered me with flashed through my body like a tidal wave, once again rearranging my nervous system.
The rest happened as if it were part of a movie: more guards arrived, men grabbed my arms and legs, and I was unceremoniously pulled back to my prison cell, my butt dragging along the floor though I could barely feel it. The guards left me in the cell and went away, their words the buzzing bees make when you’ve kicked over their nest. All I could think was that a few more hits like that and I’d be able to give the Energizer Bunny a good run for his money.
[ II ]
WHILE I WAS being turned into a human battery, Trace was enduring an entirely different ordeal. She’d been taken to another building adjacent to the one I was in. The first night she spent in a cell similar to mine, also in isolation. The guards stared at her the entire time. She, too, had a pail for a bathroom, and the only way she could get some privacy when nature called was by propping the mattress up against the bars. The guards poked it down. She moved the pail so she could hold it up while she went.
At about the time I was taken out for exercise, a woman arrived with a medical bag to check Trace out. The woman spoke French with a heavy accent that made it sound almost Spanish, which Trace speaks fairly well. She deciphered enough to understand that the woman was a nurse, and was there to make sure she was in good shape and hadn’t been abused. Trace decided to cooperate, hoping she might be able to strike up some sort of conversation with the woman to get more information from her.
She also didn’t have much choice; the nurse was accompanied by two guards with long, hard-plastic nightsticks. The nurse won some points with Trace when she scolded her escorts and the guards, telling them to go down the hall and shield their eyes while the exam took place. She was entirely businesslike during the exam. Trace couldn’t tell whether she understood her Spanish. In any event, the nurse gave no answer to Trace’s questions. She checked her over thoroughly, then did what was essentially a cursory rape exam.
“No one has attacked me,” Trace told the nurse, in English and Spanish, but the woman didn’t acknowledge her. It was likely, thought Trace, that she’d heard that from actual victims, worried that their protests would inevitably lead to more trouble.
The woman packed her gear back into the small case she’d brought and left. Trace sat back on her mattress, staring at the bars. Unlike my cell, hers had a pair of openings at the back looking out on a yard. There was no glass; they were covered with a chicken wire screen and nailed shut. Prying the wire away wouldn’t have been too difficult, but the windows were only eight inches square and there was no way she could squeeze through.
About an hour after the nurse left, another woman showed up; this one was an older inmate who brought a fresh change of clothes and sandals. Trace had been wearing green prison pajamas like mine; now she was given a purple pants suit with a long tunic. Trace tried to shoo off the guards but they didn’t retreat; finally she pulled the blouse over her top and then changed her pants, staying behind the woman for cover.
When Trace had finished, the woman led her from the cell. Trace assumed she was going to be put to work. She welcomed the chance—it would give her a better idea of the facility and make it easier to plan an escape. She followed the older woman out to the corridor and then down a short stone staircase, memorizing every footstep.
The building seemed empty; there were no other prisoners and no guards between her cell block and the door to the outside. Painted rocks outlined a path through the dirt to a small one-story building. Trace and the woman were trailed by two guards as they walked around the front and side of the building, then down a hill to a two-story stone building that had a garden and a porch. A sentry stood in front of the steps up to the porch, an AK47 slung over his shoulder and a walkie-talkie at his belt. He kept his eyes straight ahead as Trace and the old woman went to the stairs. The woman hesitated for just a second before reaching to the string tied to a bell at the side of the door. Then she gave it a sharp tug, clanging the bell twice.
A man in a soldier’s uniform opened the door. The woman took off her shoes and walked inside without saying a word. Trace did the same, still trying to take note of everything she could. She was so focused on checking out the security—there was no one else in the building, there were no video cameras, no motion detectors, no sensors on the windows—that she didn’t guess what was going on until she was shown into a small bedroom on the second floor. A silk print dress had been laid out on the narrow bed.
“Why are you taking me here?” she asked the old woman.
The woman gestured at the dress, then started out of the room. Trace started to follow, but the old woman put up her hand and pointed again at the dress.
The dress was about her size, falling nearly to the ground. It would have covered her entire body, including her arms, but she didn’t like the direction this was going in so she didn’t bother changing. Instead, she sat on the bed and listened, waiting for the old woman to leave the house so she could reconnoiter. Hearing the downstairs door close, she went to the door to the room, int
ending to slip downstairs. But as she reached it the sentry who’d been outside came in. A cross look on his face, he jerked his thumb over his shoulder, then turned abruptly and went back downstairs, expecting Trace to follow.
The house’s rooms were not very big, but there were a lot of them. A hall several times wider than the upstairs rooms divided the first floor in two. It was unfurnished except for some elaborately decorated vases and two small wooden benches. The doors to the rooms lining the hallway were closed.
The soldier showed Trace to a room near the back of the hall. The room was about twice the size of a suburban living room in the States. It was stuffed with elaborate black lacquer furniture and a variety of chairs. A man sat in one at the far corner of the room. The room was filled with tobacco smoke, and as she followed the soldier toward the chair Trace realized the man was smoking a pipe.
The man in the chair raised his hand, then in English told Trace to come and stand before him. He was the same fat guy who’d checked us in the day before.
“You are an American,” he said. “But you are not white.”
“What difference does that make to you?”
A dumb little smile appeared on fatty’s face.
“I have made a study of the West,” he told her. He used the pipe as if it were a pointer. “This pipe is from England.”
“That’s nice.”
“Western women are different from Koreans.”
Trace shifted her weight subtly. She decided she could take the soldier first, grabbing his weapon before going for fatty.
“You will cook my dinner. I wish an American dinner,” said fatty. “A hamburger.”
“What do I look like, McDonald’s?”
Fatty didn’t seem to understand.
“Are you serious?” said Trace. “You want me to make dinner?”
“Very serious, miss. You will make dinner.”
More puzzled than anything else, Trace followed the soldier back out into the hall. I don’t want to give you the impression that she’s not a good cook, but Trace wouldn’t be my first choice behind the stove. We’ve never seen much of her domestic side at Rogue Manor. Being one of the few women in a mostly male organization, she’s careful about not falling into the female role stereo type. Ask her to wash the dishes and she’ll usually tell you which part of your anatomy is in need of drastic alteration. And as for cooking at company outings, once or twice she’s threatened to treat us to some Apache specialty her great-grandmother taught her, but as they generally involve some variation of marinated armadillo, we’ve always found an excuse to pass.
The kitchen sat at the end of the hall. The appliances, all German, were upscale and new, the sort that would equip a well-off European home. Opening the double-wide Liebherr refrigerator, she found a bowl of chopped meat. There were vegetables, and some small bottles of condiments, but the fridge looked as if the navy football team had gotten there ahead of her.
Trace set the meat out on the counter and looked over the kitchen. There were no knives anywhere, and no glasses or bottles—in other words, no easy weapons were at hand. She found a medium-sized frying pan, and began cooking the burger.
“We need french fries,” she told the guard, who’d been watching her from the doorway. “Potatoes. You can’t have a hamburger without fries. It doesn’t make sense.”
The soldier didn’t say anything, nor make any sign that he understood.
“French fries,” she said, approaching him. “Potatoes. We chop them up. Chop, chop.”
He retreated. Trace ducked below to the cabinets, continuing her search for a weapon. The best she could do before the soldier returned was a large fork.
“You didn’t get potatoes?” she said to him, dropping the fork by her side.
He had a plate in his hand and slipped it onto the counter, gesturing at it.
“French fries?” she asked, but the man still didn’t understand. “I’m just cooking a burger? No roll, no vegetable, no nothing? What is it, a mono-meal?”
The man shook his head, and kept his distance. Trace finally flipped the burger onto the plate. As she did, the soldier backed out of the room.
“This is fucking weird,” she said, taking the plate and following him just up the hall to a dining room. Fatty was already waiting, sitting at the end of the table. Two more guards had appeared, clutching AK47s nervously as she approached.
“You’re just eating the hamburger by itself?” asked Trace.
“Hamburger is a very good American meal.”
“It’s not a hamburger if it’s not in a roll,” said Trace. “And you need french fries.”
She glanced at the guards. Four against one—if she’d had a gun, she wouldn’t have minded the odds, but all she was armed with was a fork. She put the burger down and took a step back.
“It really needs a bun,” said Trace. “And ketchup.”
Fatty smirked. He had a full set of Western utensils on the table.
“You can bake bread tomorrow,” he told her.
“You think I’m going to be your cook?”
Fatty laughed and explained to her that he was king here—he used that word—and had complete control over her. And everyone else, for that matter. There was no possibility that either she or I would ever be freed. The best we could do was go along to get along.
Luckily for us, fatty added, he was an all-around nice guy, a rare member of the master race who actually liked Americans. Or didn’t despise them as much as they probably should be despised. He believed in knowing the devil, and to that end had not only learned English but had made a devoted study of anything American that he could find. He had an Internet hookup—very rare in North Korea—and had unblocked access to American Web sites—even rarer. He knew that his English needed a little work, and was confident that in the future he would find the time to take some lessons from Trace. In the meantime, she would be his cook, making all Western dishes. She’d have her own room upstairs. If she behaved, she’d be granted special privileges.
“Life here can be very easy,” he told her. “You, too, can have horse meat. Not every night, but once in a while.”
“Oh, boy.”
“Tomorrow, you will make tacos. Then pizza.”
“The Great Leader is going to make you a prisoner in your own camp when he finds out that you’re keeping us prisoner,” Trace told him.
Fatty waved his hand dismissively.
“You better call General Sun,” Trace said.
Fatty said something in Korean and the guard who’d showed her in poked a gun in her ribs.
“You will go upstairs now,” said fatty. “Good night.”
I know what you’re thinking: here’s the part where fatty follows her and tries to rip off her clothes. We’ll have a nice cheesy sex scene, just enough T and A to tease the teenagers—and we’re all teenagers when it comes to cheesy sex scenes. Then we’ll move on to the real action. Trace will deliver a series of sharp kicks to his intelligence, dispatch the soldier and the other guards one by one, then escape.
But fatty didn’t rip off her clothes or make a pass at her. He didn’t even go upstairs.
Maybe he was a eunuch.
[ III ]
WHILE TRACE WAS auditioning as a chef, I was sitting in my cell trying to come up with a way of getting out before midnight. The locks were simple, but I had nothing to pick them with. The only solution was to get the guards to open the door for me.
A few strategic groans, a little foam at the mouth—I’d use one of the oldest tricks in the book, pretending to be sick to get them inside with me. Depending on the circumstances, I’d take them in the cell or on the way to the infirmary. These guys weren’t exactly large, and knocking them around would release some tension.
Long years of habit have given me an internal clock that’s generally accurate to within ten minutes. I reckoned it was closing in on 1800. But given the stakes I wanted as much confirmation as possible. When dinner came, I asked the guard who pushed it
through the slot what time it was. The man didn’t answer, or even seem to hear. I took the rice and went back to my spot against the wall. It was brown rather than the usual black—almost good enough to eat. As I scooped up the rice, my fingers scraped against something hard. I took it out, and found a key.
And then another. Someone thought I had an iron deficiency.
I tried to strike up a conversation with the attendant when he reappeared, using my limited Korean to ask what time it was. The blank expression on his face simply became blanker.
“Myeot soyeyo?” I repeated.
No answer.
“Time,” I told him in English, tapping my wrist.
He shook his head, then grabbed for the bowl. As I gazed at the hall after he walked away, I realized I could see flickers of his shadow. I sat down and began deciphering the gray splotches at the base of the wall. I was seeing the shadows of the two guards out in the corridor. The shadows were extremely faint, reflections of light bouncing off two walls, but I could detect movement as the man who had brought me food walked by them, his narrow gray shadow flickering, then growing steadily fainter. Meanwhile, the other two shadows raised themselves slightly—the guards shifted in their positions, relaxing as the man left.
I now had an early warning system, which I tested a half hour later. I saw the faint gray spots separate, then watched one move toward me. I slid over to the back of the cell and, sure enough, one of my guards appeared, making the rounds.
Seven P.M.
I went back to shadow watching. In another hour, I saw movement again, but this time no one came to my cell. The guards moved on the hours—on the odd hours one checked my cell, on the even hours one walked up somewhere, either to the head of the hallway or a bathroom. Otherwise, they were disciplined enough to remain at their posts with almost no movement and absolutely no chatter. They were as professional as they come.
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