by Robin Jarvis
Doctor Choe Soo-jin proceeded to take the sample. Lee gazed around at the four young soldiers flanking the bed. They might have been shop-window dummies for all the expression on their features. None of them spoke English, or at least had never acknowledged that they could. Sometimes he wondered if they listened to what was said when he was in the company of his friends and then reported everything to Doctor Choe, or their commanding officer, afterwards.
Lee cast a piercing glance at the mirrored wall. He was sure it was one of those two-way numbers; probably a video camera behind there taping it all anyway.
He looked back at the two grim-faced men on his left. There were three different sets who ‘nannied’ him in rotation, with a changeover every four hours. He’d given each group a name to amuse himself. This quartet were the Sex and the City women, because his mother used to enjoy that show, and they’d taken over from Take That (minus Robbie) sometime during the night when he was asleep. His grandmother had been a big fan of “that nice Gary Barlow”. Soon it would be the turn of the Spice Girls (minus Geri). He didn’t know anyone who had liked them, but it cracked him up to call these stern guards Sporty, Posh, Baby and Scary.
His eyes dropped to the aluminium chain threaded through their belts. The pair on the right were joined in the same way. Both chains ended in a set of steel handcuffs, locked round Lee’s wrists. He blew on them gently. He’d been pulling on them in his sleep and the skin was raw and broken.
“Just another day chained up in North Korea,” he murmured. “Can my life blow any more? How the hell did it get to this?”
2
THE SECRET STRONGHOLD in the northern region of the Baekdudaegan Mountains had taken seventeen years to excavate. From the outside there was no evidence of the extensive tunnel system in which 7,500 members of the People’s Army were stationed at any one time. The largest terraces and balconies were built in the style of old temples, with sagging tiled roofs, artificially distressed to appear ancient and neglected, while others were simply cut horizontally into the slope and disguised with camouflage. The two helipads and missile silos were similarly obscured. The single road which zigzagged up to the main, but discreet, entrance was constantly monitored by sniper outposts.
Beneath the pagoda-like roof that sheltered one of the terraces, Maggie rested her elbows on the low wall and pulled the fur-lined collar of the greatcoat round her chin. The biting December air was sharp in the fifteen-year-old’s nostrils and she buried them in her mittened hands. She couldn’t remember ever being warm and, to make it worse, there was no hot water in the showers. The primitive plumbing had broken down again.
The usually breathtaking view was hidden today. Beyond the wall, the grey slopes of the mountain dropped steeply into a thick white mist that filled the valley, blotting out the dark forests and surrounding snowy peaks. It was like staring into a universe of nothing, an endless blank canvas waiting for the first mark or stroke of colour to be applied. It was almost hypnotic and Maggie’s mind drifted.
She thought back to that July night, when they escaped from the prison camp in England – how she and the other aberrant children had crowded into a military helicopter, with no idea where they were being taken. Through the darkness, they were flown across the Channel to a private airstrip in France, where a jet was waiting to whisk them on across the world.
At the time it felt so unreal, like an adventure happening to someone else. They didn’t question anything. The elation of having got out of that horrendous place alive, combined with the food provided on the journey, drove all other thoughts out of their heads. They didn’t care where they were going. They were finally safe from Punchinello bullets and starvation. Each new day would no longer be a hopeless struggle for survival. Even when they touched down and sleepily discovered just where this sanctuary was, it didn’t really register.
North Korea, or ‘the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’ as they swiftly learned to call it, had shown them its most benign and welcoming face. The children of the camp had been fêted as honoured guests and, for the first week, enjoyed the best that this secretive and isolated corner of the world could offer. After the privations and sadistic treatment they had suffered back home, it was like a surreal holiday.
They were given grand tours of the capital city, Pyongyang, and the surrounding provinces. They were bussed to old Buddhist temples, imposing monuments and battle sites, and attended a banquet at which the Supreme Leader, Kim Jong-un, was present, surrounded by an austere array of Generals and Grand Marshals. They were even ushered into the palatial mausoleum where the embalmed corpses of Kim Jong-un’s revered father and grandfather were ceremoniously displayed in glass cases. Maggie and the other refugees filed past them in disbelief: what sort of a country was this? A girl called Esther threw up on the steps afterwards.
A crew from Korean Central Television, the only news broadcaster, followed them everywhere. Just three channels were available to the people of Pyongyang and the rest of the country made do with one. There was no satellite TV or Internet for ordinary citizens: such things were forbidden. Every TV set was configured to receive only these official channels and regular checks were made to ensure they were not tampered with.
The rescued foreign children became instant celebrities. They were interviewed together, in small groups of three or four and individually. North Korea wanted to know the exact nature of the madness happening outside its borders. How could a mere book of European fairy tales be the cause of so much turmoil and confusion? Viewers watched with horrified fascination as the youngsters recounted frightening stories of the camp and the rejection by their own families.
Maggie lost track of the times she had repeated the same information.
“No, it’s not a normal book,” she had said, struggling to explain the unexplainable. “It sucks you in and you really believe you’re one of the characters in it and all this, the real world, is just a dream. Honest, that’s what it is – and you wear a playing card to show who you are in that story! No, it didn’t work on me, or any of the others here. We don’t know why, it just didn’t. That’s why they locked us up and treated us worse than animals. We were rejects. You wouldn’t believe what they did to us.”
The interviewer pressed for details and the interpreter had difficulty keeping up with the barrage of questions. Maggie was shown footage, gathered by the Research Department for External Intelligence, of foreign cities where protests against Dancing Jax had escalated into violent riots. Bookshops and publishers were firebombed. Civil war had burned fiercely but briefly until everyone was under the book’s spell.
“Same happened in Britain,” she said, watching a pitched battle storm through the streets of Moscow, between those who had read it and those who hadn’t. “We went through all that. You can’t fight it. It’s too strong. Then there are the… things.”
The microphone almost poked her in the nose as it was pushed closer.
“Somehow things are coming through, from the book,” she said. “It sounds mad, but it’s true. Nightmares, monsters in those fairy tales, are becoming real. I’ve seen them, I’ve fought them. I thought the Punchinello Guards were bad enough, but then there were… I dunno what they really are, but they’re called Doggy-Long-Legs in the book and all they want to do is eat your face. One of the guards had his nose chewed right off. Then there was the… we never found out what it was – all giant worms and tentacles. It killed my… a friend of mine. It got him – it got my Marcus.”
Maggie fell silent. The interview had then cut to a segment of an American news report from several months ago, back when America was wondering what was happening in the UK. It was second- or third-generation video, again acquired by the intelligence department. The reporter was Kate Kryzewski, speaking from Kew Gardens, investigating a previously unknown invasive shrub with pulpy grey fruit, called minchet. Eventually she too had fallen victim to the power of the book.
When the news cut back, Maggie had been replaced by a self-co
nscious, bespectacled boy wearing a cowboy hat. “Er… yes,” he said. “That stuff grows everywhere now and it stinks. The creatures from the book eat it, as well as other things… and the Jaxers use it to heighten the reading experience. Makes it better… sharper somehow. It tastes worse than it smells though and gives you gut ache.”
“Gives you the trots!” Maggie’s voice shouted off camera.
The picture cut to an army scientist holding a single horned skull, fixed to a stout stick. The austere, shouting voice-over told the audience it had been thoroughly examined and undergone testing. It was not a hoax; this was a genuine unicorn skull. In North Korea they called it a kirin and its appearance was seen as an auspicious sign, for these mythical creatures only appeared during the reign of wise rulers. But where had it come from? None of the children seemed to know and the boy in the Stetson only admitted to bringing it from the camp. Another strange item was held up for the viewers. A long, crooked silver wand, tipped with an amber star. The interviewer waved it around, pulling comical faces. Maggie said it belonged to the retired Fairy Godmother character, but didn’t say how it came to be in the camp. Both it and the skull were confiscated.
“I don’t want my damn face on TV!” Lee had growled, among other things that didn’t get translated.
“What they do to you?” he was badgered. “What they do?”
“You really wanna know?” he snarled back. “They dragged my girlfriend to an abattoir and slaughtered her like a pig, that’s what. Then those sick bastards fed her to us. You got that? You comprende that? Yeah, you heard right – they fed her to us!”
And so the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea learned about Dancing Jax. For once the ceaseless, bombastic propaganda machine didn’t need to exaggerate the evils of the imperialist Western aggressors; in fact, it concentrated its efforts in downplaying the dangers to dampen the mounting sense of panic. Yes, it was a state of emergency and they stood alone against the entire world, but that was nothing new. Such a crisis is what their founder, Kim Il-sung, foresaw in his great wisdom and why they would survive even this. Whatever threatened their borders would be dealt with. They had no need to fear. Kim Jong-un, the founder’s grandson, would ensure no harm would come to his people. They would remain isolated from the world and stay safe.
But the presence of the foreign children was a constant reminder of the outside danger and so, when that first week was over, the special treatment, the visits, the interviews stopped. Then the only adult female, Mrs Benedict, was found dead in the bathroom of their hotel. She had killed herself and the euphoria of having escaped the camp died with her. Two nights later, they were all removed from Pyongyang.
Maggie recalled that less comfortable journey in the back of military trucks through rugged, hilly terrain and seemingly endless forests, along rudimentary roads until, finally, they reached this secret base built into the mountain. The holiday was over. They had swapped one prison for another.
“Your face will freeze and drop off out here,” a friendly voice declared.
The teenage girl blinked. She had stared into the fog too long and her eyes ached. Turning away from the blank void, she saw a neat, elderly gentleman approaching along the terrace.
“Morning, Gerald,” she called, glad to see him. “I was miles away.”
“A chon for your thoughts?”
“Oh – I was thinking back to when we first got here.”
The man clapped his gloved hands and shuddered inside his overcoat.
“All those months ago,” he said. “When you piled out of those wagons. It was like something from Oliver! I almost started singing ‘Consider yourself’ and giving you my Artful Dodger.”
He gripped his lapels and did some nimble footwork. Maggie laughed.
“More like an Artful Codger nowadays, mind,” he chuckled.
“I wish I’d seen you back when you were performing,” Maggie said. “I bet you were amazing.”
Gerald Benning put his arm round her. He never really spoke about his show-business past, but somehow word had got around the children here, probably via Martin, and they liked to ask him questions about his former life. Gerald always answered with good humour, but usually steered the conversation around to other things and asked them about themselves. He thought it was important to remind them, especially the younger ones, what their world was like before all this had happened.
He got them talking about the little aspects of that time, the simple things that they’d forgotten: family holidays, best birthday presents, favourite movies and songs, names of pets and who they’d sat next to in school. He didn’t promise them that, one day, those things would return and everything would be as it was. That would have been cruel. They wouldn’t have believed him anyway. But those memories told them they weren’t just refugees dependant on the charity of a suspicious nation, and that there had been goodness and love in their lives, and they shouldn’t hate their parents for rejecting them. It wasn’t their fault. Dancing Jax was to blame.
Maggie smiled at him. “God knows what we’d have done without you,” she said. “All these months, stuck away up here with less freedom than we had in the camp and nothing to do, day in, day out, but snipe and bitch. We’d have probably killed each other by now. I was ready to strangle that Esther first thing today. She’s worse than she ever was. What a spiteful cow; she’s really doing my head in.”
“She’s difficult to like, that one,” Gerald conceded. “And, since she went all limpet-like on Nicholas, he’s developed full-blown annoyingness too. But we’re none of us perfect and you’ve all been through enough to send most people round the twist and back again. Being cooped up here like battery hens doesn’t help. Don’t let it get to you. Rise above it, my dear.”
“You always make it seem better somehow. Even in this miserable place…”
“Titipu,” he interrupted with a wink. Gerald had mischievously christened the mountain base after the fictional town featured in The Mikado, which was a huge insult to their North Korean hosts. There was nothing but enmity between them and Japan, where The Mikado was set.
“See, all the kids call it that now. They dunno what it is, but it sounds funny. You’ve given them something to laugh at, as long as the Generals don’t find out. You make it bearable and keep us busy with daft schemes. Look how you wangled your way into the kitchens to make that birthday cake for Lee last month.”
“He’d have been happier if I’d managed to get him some ciggies.”
“Oh, don’t expect him to show gratitude, he’s never been the demonstrative type, but that meant a lot to him that did. He’s not the same since Charm… since she died.”
“Poor girl,” Gerald said sadly. “That was horrific for all of you. I’d like to have known her. She sounds dazzling.”
Maggie lowered her eyes. “Best friend I ever had,” she said. “Not a day goes by when I don’t think about her – and my Marcus – and miss them. After all these months, it still hurts.”
“Course it does. And it always will, but it won’t always be as sharp and you’ll remember how good they made you feel more often than the pain of losing them. Takes a long time though.”
Maggie bit her lip guiltily. She had forgotten the Scottish boy, Alasdair. He had lured the Punchinellos away so that the rest of them could escape. They had all heard the ferocity of the gunfire in those dark woods and understood what it signified. His body was probably still in the New Forest, unburied and picked at by birds and animals – or worse.
And then there was Mrs Benedict…
“I should’ve done more to help Charm’s mum,” Maggie said unhappily. “That first week, after she found out what happened, I should’ve…”
“There was nothing anyone could do,” Gerald told her firmly. “Mrs Benedict just couldn’t live with her grief. Not everyone can. Don’t you ever think you could have stopped her. Despair is a terrible thing, the absolute worst.”
He blew on his gloved hands as if to dispel the sadne
ss and the vapour cloud melted into the fog.
“But it’s no use dwelling on the past, young Maggie,” he declared breezily. “‘Turn, oh turn, in this direction,’ as the chorus sing in Patience. Worse things are undoubtedly just around the corner and we’ve got to be ready for them. But, in the meantime, ‘Let the merry cymbals sound.’ We’re not at home to Mr Despair and we’ve got to ensure your friend Lee doesn’t slip down into that dark pit.”
The girl agreed. “He’s not about to join your choir though,” she told Gerald. “I don’t know how you roped the rest of us into it either. My voice is never going to be mistaken for Adele’s. And then there’s the music lessons you do, way more popular than Martin’s boring maths classes. You really do keep our spirits up, not to mention the stuff you coax out of the guards for us. I’ve no idea how you manage that. I can’t get a smile out of the surly buggers.”
“I let them slay me at chess,” said Gerald, waving the compliment aside. “They’re mad about it. Now, glad you mentioned the choir because I’ve decided it’s going to be Christmas carols all this week – and not just the obvious ones. There’ll be no jingle bells, Batman smells or shepherds’ socks from you lot. Let’s show these gloomy Titiputians what they’re missing.”
“They’re not going to let us sing Chrimble songs, are they? I thought you said they were anti the whole thing in a mega way?”
“Oh, they are. Before this madness happened, the South Koreans used to put lights round a tower near the demilitarised zone so it looked like a Christmas tree and this bunch always threatened to fire rockets at it. They didn’t want their hoi polloi getting any fancy ideas. So what we’re not going to do is tell them we’re singing carols. I know some lovely old ones that aren’t too specific and I can tweak the words in others. They won’t cotton on; they’ll just think we’re doing our usual practising. I might even get the interpreters and guards joining in – now there’s a challenge. If I could get them to warble a wassail, or ‘The Coventry Carol’, that would be my Christmas present to myself. How hot do you think their Latin is?”
