Joy Brigade (16 page)

Again, I didn’t answer. I knew if she hadn’t exposed me already, she wouldn’t until she could figure out whether or not powerful people in North Korea were behind me. If she exposed me too early, she took the risk of also exposing the incompetence of her clients, the commander of the Port of Nampo and the security apparatus at the Pyongyang Train Station. And incompetence in North Korea can prove fatal. Mistakes are not tolerated by the Great Leader and are dealt with harshly. Therefore, bad news is suppressed; information flows downhill but never uphill. Senior Captain Rhee’s task was to follow me, capture me if
possible, question me, and keep everything quiet until she was sure of who, and what, she was dealing with.

“Hero Kang claims you are a hero of the invasion of Prague,” she said, staring intently into my eyes, searching for any sign of understanding. “But the Romanians didn’t participate in that invasion.” She leaned even closer to me. I felt her fresh breath mingling with mine. “You are a liar,” she said, pausing for a while to let the insult sink in. When I didn’t react, she said, “In this country, everyone lies. It is how we live. But you are after something. What is it?”

Her hand reached out and touched mine. The fingers were soft, long, clinging.

“We are the same, you and I,” she said. “You can trust me. Maybe we can do business.”

The music ended with a rousing crescendo. The gorgeous young dancing women took a bow and started to back out of the room. Senior Captain Rhee Mi-sook leaned away, pulling her hand back quickly. She looked around. I couldn’t help admiring her lovely profile. Her figure was full, and even under the covering of her silk tunic and high-waisted skirt, it was clear that Captain Rhee Mi-sook was all woman.

“I will talk to you later,” she said. “Stay away from the women here. Anyone you touch will be cast off and sent to work in the rice fields.”

Still, I didn’t answer. She couldn’t be sure I spoke English. She stood and gave me one last exasperated look. “Do you understand me?” she asked. But it was time for her and all the women to leave. She sighed in frustration and disappeared in a whoosh of swirling silk.

The lights lowered. Somewhere behind us, a movie projector clattered to life. A beam of light found a white screen and then we were feted with sports highlights of recent international events. In each clip, North Koreans competed and were victorious. Not one loss was reported. As the film flickered, the young women started to filter back into the room. However, they were no longer wearing their military uniforms. Now they were wearing skirts and blouses of either pure white or flowery patterned silk. Some of them went straight to a particular table and a particular young man. Other women held back, unsure of where to go, until one of the young men called to her. Then they bowed and scurried forward eagerly, taking a seat next to the man and almost immediately snuggling up next to him. The commissar had disappeared. Soon no one was paying attention to the sporting events on the screen and I realized that there was a lot of heavy breathing going on. Skirts were lifted, blouses opened.

I’d been in brothels before. Plenty of them. Even the worst of them offered a little privacy. But here, none of the young athletes were grabbing some girl by the hand and sneaking off into a back room. They all stayed where they were. It didn’t seem natural. But this was North Korea. The bosses wanted to reward these young champions, but they didn’t want to offer any of these young people privacy, where they might be able to form an even more intimate relationship, where they might talk about their hopes and dreams, where they might—by some fantastic stretch of the imagination—begin to plot against the Great Leader. I felt very uncomfortable.

And then a young woman appeared by my side. The flickering light of the newsreel fell on a round face and a mouth set in a determined line. She was still wearing a military uniform.

“Even in the harshest of winters,” she whispered in Korean, “the
mugunghwa
blooms.”

The purple
mugunghwa
is the ancient national flower of Korea. The sturdy blossom springs to life throughout the length and breadth of the Korean peninsula. In recent times, the North Korean regime designated the
mongnan
, a type of magnolia, the new national flower in its place—a move the South Koreans never agreed with.

She waited for my answer.

“Especially, I’m told, on the highest mountains,” I whispered back.

She picked up a tray of cold meat and slipped a key in my hand. Without looking back, she carried the tray away through the side door of the hall. Holding it low so no one else could see it, I studied the key. It was large, old-fashioned, apparently made of brass. A number had been etched along its side: 444.

I stared at the key, twisting it in the dim light to make sure I was reading it right. There it was, three Arabic numerals: 444. I was surprised because I’d never before seen such a combination in South Korea. South Korean hotels don’t have a fourth floor, or even a room number four, much less a room numbered four forty-four.

Still, there it was. I clutched the key in my hand. Everyone seemed preoccupied. I slipped into the shadows by the wall and edged through the rustling clothes and gasping breaths until I’d made my way out into the empty hallway.
In the moonlit courtyard, I crouched for a moment behind a tall shrub with sturdy branches.

I waited. No one was following. No sign of Captain Rhee Mi-sook. I crept away toward buildings that I hoped would be lodging for the cadres, still wondering about the curious numbers. Still wondering if I’d live through this night.

Four is the number of death.

In Chinese, the character for the number four is pronounced like the “su” in “surreal.” In Korean, the same character is pronounced “sa.” And in both cases the character for death is pronounced in exactly the same way. That’s why hotels in the Far East skip the fourth floor. Some hotels, especially those catering to Westerners, also manage to do without a thirteenth floor, thereby covering superstitions developed on both ends of the Eurasian landmass.

So I wondered at a room numbered 444. Were the North Koreans actively trying to eliminate old superstitions? If so, that was laudable. One of the few laudable things I’d seen this government do since I’d arrived.

The woman who’d handed me the key wasn’t after me for my body. In fact, a North Korean woman with any brains would avoid me like a cholera epidemic. Relationships with foreigners are nothing but trouble. Any sign of anything other than complete and utter loyalty to the Kim clan, any allegiance to any foreign power, could result in not only the offending person but also their entire family being sent to the North Korean version of the gulag. Conditions there were so bad that for most people a prison sentence was the equivalent of a death sentence.

So the woman who’d handed me this key had been very brave. It was my job now to find her without exposing her to more danger.

When I was sure no one was watching, I emerged from the shadow of the bush and strolled toward a tile-roofed building on the far side of a gurgling pond. It would be best to avoid people, to stick to the shadows, but not to seem that I was hiding. In case I was caught, I could play the role of the dumb foreigner—a role that every North Korean had been propagandized to accept—and claim that I was lost.

There were no lights on in the building. It was single-story, about twenty yards long. Above the doorway at the end, I searched for some sort of numbering system. Then I saw it, carved into an oblong wooden placard attached to the doorframe: 73. Building number 73. So this key probably belonged to building number 44. I gazed around me. Nothing moved, just dark buildings all about the same size as this one, moonlight glimmering off their tiled roofs. A lot of real estate, I thought, and a lot of well-maintained buildings not being put to good use. The Communist cadres could afford waste like this, while the working people, whom they were supposedly sworn to protect, lived in poorly heated hovels with one family crammed on top of another.

This country truly was paradise, if you had the right connections.

Would they miss me back at the main hall? Probably not for a while. At least not until the newsreels were over and the heavy breathing stopped.

Sticking to the shadows, I continued my search.

Just as I approached the building that I thought was number 44, I heard the whistle. It was low, so low that I couldn’t be sure it wasn’t only the gentle evening breeze wafting through the rose bushes. So low that I thought I’d imagined the sound and that it was no more than the quivering of my nervous system.

I froze, hidden behind a low rock wall.

There it was again, another low whistle.

Someone was trying to warn me. Of what?

I lowered myself almost flat on the ground, holding myself just off the grass in a push-up position. Carefully, I studied every shadow around me. Nothing. No movement. I rose slowly and slunk toward the entranceway of the building I thought was number 44.

It was unlike the others. In fact, it wasn’t a proper building at all, just a grassy hillock with a stone wall on one side, like an ammunition storage facility. But as I approached, the moonlight glinted off stone carvings, faded from years of erosion, and then I saw the carved placard: 44. Building 44, door number 4. This was it. I realized why it had been given the number of death and why it looked so much like an explosives storage facility. It was a tomb. An ancient tomb. The door, however, looked modern, made of iron rather than the hand-carved stone that surrounded it.

The ancient kingdom of Koguryo had many tombs scattered throughout North Korea and what is now Chinese Manchuria. I knew that some of the most famous tombs were located near Pyongyang. This was one of them.

Fingers touched my elbow.

I spun, my eyes wide, ready to fight.

I had to look down to see her face. It was the woman who’d handed me the key. She held a forefinger to her mouth, warning me to be quiet. Then she held out her palm.

After steadying myself and releasing my breath quietly, I placed the key in her hand. She motioned for me to step into the shadow of the mound and then shoved the key into a hole in the iron door. She tried to turn it, but it didn’t budge. She glanced back at me inquiringly. I stepped past her and tried the key. It seemed to be catching, but, predictably, the locking mechanism was rusted from disuse. I wished we had some lubricating oil, but we didn’t, so I pulled the key out of the lock, licked my fingertips, and rubbed spit along the edge. I placed the key back into the lock and turned. It resisted, but I kept a steady pressure on it, not enough to snap the key but enough to force the stubborn connections to give. Finally, the key groaned and the handle of the door sprung upward. I pulled on the handle and the door creaked open, disturbing soil and grass.

Stale air rushed out, as if grateful to be free. We stared at the stone steps leading down into a black pit.

I still didn’t know why I was here or what we were supposed to do. All I knew was that I had to trust this woman. She was my only hope of getting out of here in one piece.

She glanced behind us, then reached into the pocket of her wool jacket and pulled out a small flashlight. She stepped inside the tomb and I followed. Only when I’d pulled the big iron door shut behind us did she switch on the flashlight. At the bottom of a short flight of steps, a long stone hallway led away from the door. She inched
forward, walking upright. I had to crouch to keep from knocking my head against low-hanging rock.

Her name was Hye-kyong. She didn’t tell me her family name, but I already knew it. Kang. Doc Yong had told me that she was Hero Kang’s daughter, something that was best left undiscussed. I spoke Korean to her freely. If she betrayed me, I’d never get out of here alive anyway, but I didn’t think she would. Being a member of the Manchurian Battalion, and working with a foreigner like this, she was in as much danger as I was—if not more.

The smooth stone walls of the passageway were covered with frescoes. Ancient hunting scenes: men galloping on horses, letting loose arrows at magnificent horned creatures, dogs running at their side.

We hardly had time to admire them.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“There are tunnels,” she said, “all through this complex. Some lead to the ancient Koguryo tombs, some to bomb shelters. This one leads to the meeting room where Commissar Oh conducts his state security briefings.”

“And we’re going there why?”

“I want to show you something.”

I decided to prod her a little, to get her to open up. The more information I had, the more likely I was to survive. “Are you a member of the Joy Brigade?”

She lowered her head. “That is my shame.”

“I thought it was an honor to serve the Great Leader and the cadres who assist him in his great work.”

She stopped and swiveled on me. “Do you mock me?”

“No,” I said. “I’m just trying to understand.”

Her small fists were clenched and her round face was bright red. “I am a proud woman,” she said. “My father is a proud man. We believed that I would be serving the Great Leader when I was chosen for this job. And then I discovered our real purpose here.”