The Expediter (7 page)

The morning was pretty—sunny, mild, only a light breeze. A lot of people would be in the parks today, the lucky ones among them there to eat their lunches. For most North Koreans lack of food was the major issue in their lives. On the surface Pyongyang was a modern, beautiful city. But people here were slowly starving to death, while less than two hundred kilometers to the south people in Seoul were getting fat like Americans.

“I think we’ll find the truth once you’re inside,” Pak told his prisoners.

He and Ri got out of the car and opened the rear doors.

Soon got out and sniffed the fresh air as if he knew he’d never smell it again, but Yi got out, shoved Ri aside, and bolted for the front entry.

“Stop!” Ri shouted, but the little man kept running.

Pak was on the opposite side of the car from his sergeant. “Don’t shoot!”

Ri fired once, the bullet hitting Yi high in the middle of his back, and he was flung forward onto the pavement, his head bouncing once and then he lay perfectly still.

“Goddamnit, I said don’t shoot!” Pak shouted in frustration.

“But he was getting away,” Ri said.

Two armed guards from the front came back in a run, their AK-47s at the ready.

“Everything is okay!” Pak shouted. “Stand down.”

The guards pulled up just before Yi’s body, not sure what had happened or what they were supposed to do. Almost no one in Pyongyang had any experience with this sort of thing.

“He was trying to escape,” Ri said.

“One of you return to your post and call for a doctor and an ambulance,” Pak said. “The other one stay with the body.”

The guards saluted, and one of them headed back to the front of the building.

“You won’t be able to ask that poor bastard any questions,” Soon said sardonically.

“Makes you my best bet,” Pak told him. He turned to Ri. “See what the man has in his pockets, then meet me upstairs.”

“Sorry, I was thinking about those two cops.”

“I know,” Pak said.

He took Soon by the elbow and led him to the back entrance, and downstairs to the lockup and interrogation center.

The booking clerk looked up as Pak came through the swinging doors with his prisoner, and placed Soon’s passport on the counter. “Suspicion of murder.”

“From last night, sir?” the clerk asked, pulling a form from a tray. He was a young man with narrow cheeks and a permanent scowl.

“Yes. Once he’s processed I want him prepped for interrogation. I’ll be back this afternoon.”

“What’ll it be, drugs or torture?” Soon asked with a smirk.

Again something bothersome, something not quite right, niggled at the back of Pak’s head. “Whatever it is you won’t like it, but we’ll get our answers.”

When a pair of guards came out to take charge of the prisoner Pak headed upstairs to his office to see if the Chinese had come up with anything new before he drove out to brief Kim Jong Il. He wasn’t looking forward to the meeting. Being anywhere near the man was always dangerous.

The flight to Beijing was a little under two hours, and Kim managed to hold herself together by burying her nose in a magazine and pretending to read. Everyone aboard was shook up because of what had happened on the taxiway, even the flight attendants were subdued, and no one was doing much talking.

In the terminal at Capital International Airport Sue shook her hand. “I’m sorry about those guys, especially the one you smiled at. Did you know him?”

Kim didn’t know if she trusted herself to speak. She wanted to curl up in a ball in some corner and let it all out. She shook her head. “No.”

“Well, he’s in some big trouble now,” Sue said. “Maybe he has family or friends, someone at home who can find out what’s going on, and help him out.” She shook her head. “Dirty bastards. I’m sorry I came on this trip.”

Kim nodded. “So am I.”

“I’m off to catch my flight,” Sue said. “Good luck to you. And don’t be too shook up. Just be glad it wasn’t you they grabbed.”

They shook hands and Sue scurried down the corridor to catch her JAL flight back to Tokyo, leaving Kim standing flat-footed while people streamed around her as if she were a boulder in the middle of a stream.

What came next? After the initial shock of witnessing Soon and the other man being led off in restraints, she’d asked herself that same question over and over. The problem was she didn’t know where to begin, except to get on the Korean Airlines flight back to Seoul.

She turned and headed down the busy corridor to the KA gate, her entire body as numb as her brain.

From the very beginning she and Soon understood that sooner or
later either of them could be killed. It was the risk they’d agreed to take when they joined the South Korean Special Forces, and it was the risk they agreed to take when they resigned their commissions so that they could be married and turn freelance.

But that life had been so stupid, she reflected now. She was young and she’d believed in Soon; everything he told her seemed like poetry to her ears. He made perfect sense. They were well trained and they needed money to live. More would be better than less.

In part, she supposed, she had gone along with him not just out of love, but because like him she’d never been able to play by the rules. As a kid she’d always been in trouble with her parents and at school, where she’d been a rebellious tomboy. It was something unusual for a South Korean girl from a pious Buddhist family, and no one knew what to do with her.

In college where she studied social history and geography her grades were lackluster at best, and she had the reputation of sleeping around, though that part was mostly untrue. She had drifted, never really getting in step with the people around her, until an uncle suggested that she join the Army. “Rules are for everybody,” he’d preached. “Perhaps in the Army you will learn that means you as well.”

After she graduated she got an apartment in downtown Seoul, and found a job working for the automobile giant Kia Motors in the advertising department where she was supposed to write reports on the social conditions in countries where advertising money was being spent. Like any large corporation, Kia depended on maintaining its good name, and was careful not to make some social faux pas because no one was aware of some obscure taboo.

She’d lasted less than three months at a job she considered stupid, working mostly for men who she thought were interested in her only because she was good-looking, and with women who were jealous.

The Army, which was having recruitment problems, welcomed her with open arms; it liked tomboys. She’d breezed through Officers Candidate School with top marks, and in Special Forces school she was the lead woman in her class, and beat all but a few of the men.

She’d found a home, a place where she could be herself, excel at something and be valued for just that, and not her looks. For the first time in her life she was happy.

Then she met Soon, and she realized overnight that she’d never even known the meaning of the word. He became her entire life. The sun rose and set on his existence. Every moment of the night or day that she wasn’t at his side was darkness, and every moment she was at his side was sunshine.

The flight to Seoul was already loading passengers when she reached the gate and handed over her boarding pass. Before she entered the jetway, she turned to look back down the corridor in case some miracle had occurred and Soon was racing to catch up with her.

But he wasn’t there, and she suspected that she might never see him again.

Unless Alexandar could help.

Walking down the jetway to the aircraft she promised that she would do whatever it took to get her husband back, lies, theft, murder, or sex. If lying and killing and murder were not enough for the Russian she would gladly sleep with him, if only Soon could come back.

The day was turning out to be sunny and mild as Pak drove out of the city and into the countryside along the Dandong Highway that led northwest to the Chinese border. The well-maintained road was all but deserted, and passing through Changsan Park, he felt a momentary pang for the bustle of the West.

Roads like this in California at this hour of the day would be
streaming with cars of every make and vintage. Parks would be filled with mothers pushing baby carriages or dressed in spandex tights with tiny plastic helmets perched on their heads riding ten-speed mountain bikes along the paths.

Everyone would be listening to music, either through headsets or boom boxes or in their cars, which vibrated with the bass notes. America was a musical nation.

Here it was quiet, by contrast. A graveyard compared to a fairground. Pak’s car had no radio except for communications, which he’d turned off, so he drove in silence. He turned off the main highway about twenty kilometers outside the city, and followed an unmarked highway up into the heavily wooded hills until he reached a tall fence topped with razor wire. A Special Forces soldier came out of a guardhouse and motioned for him to pull up at the reception gate. A Kalashnikov, muzzle down, was slung over his shoulder and his uniform and boots were as crisp as his movements as he approached the car.

“Your papers,” the guard said, and Pak handed them out.

“What are you doing here?” the soldier asked, inspecting Pak’s identity booklet. He looked up to compare the photograph.

“To present my report on a situation in the city that developed early this morning. I’m here on orders from Dear Leader,” Pak said. He could see another soldier inside the guardhouse talking on a telephone.

“Are you armed?”

“Yes,” Pak said. He took his shoulder holster and Russian-made PSM pistol out of the glove compartment and handed them through the window. The semiautomatic fired a small 5.45 mm bullet, but its compact size was an advantage. It could be carried in a shoulder or ankle holster or even in a trousers pocket without detection.

“Your weapon and identification booklet will be returned to you when you leave,” the soldier said. “Do you know the way, Colonel, or would you like an escort?”

“Is he in the main house?”

“Yes.”

“I know the way.”

“Do not stop or turn off the main road,” the soldier warned. “You will be expected.” He stepped back and the electric gate trundled open allowing Pak to drive through.

Residence 55, which was Kim Jong Il’s official home, was actually an elaborate compound in the sprawling hills. The main house was a rambling two-story building nestled on the shore of a man-made lake dotted with islands, all of which were connected by walkways.

Nearby, but partially hidden by the crest of a hill, was the main security building where Dear Leader’s guards were quartered and where his personal intelligence directors who made up the real power behind the Cabinet General Intelligence Bureau met and worked.

In front of that particular building, for whatever reason no one knew, a running track and athletic field had been constructed along with a parade ground and grandstand where Kim Jong Il could review his private Praetorian Guard army.

Sprinkled here and there in the woods were several smaller residences for some of Dear Leader’s family members and for a few close personal friends, though precious few, even those high in the government, knew who was staying out here at any given time.

A pair of buildings housed a theater for live music and dance performances and a state-of-the-art movie theater with a library of thousands of titles, mostly American. Watching American movies was one of Dear Leader’s major preoccupations, that along with his love of fine French cognacs cost the state millions of dollars of scarce foreign exchange every year.

Pak pulled up at the end of a long, tree-lined driveway in front of the big concrete and steel house. The entrance was hidden behind an elaborate screen of flowers and topiary. A dozen Korean flags fluttered in the light breeze, and getting out of the car he could smell the fragrant odors. Somewhere in the distance he could hear water flowing in fountains, and the sun reflected brightly off the expansive windows in the house.