Your Republic Is Calling You (8 page)

Fear and greed propelled people to act at the end of the century. It was trepidation of the unknown, not of war or disease or riots. It sounded scientific that a four-digit number starting with a 2 would shove the world into chaos, but shamanism was at its core. Ki-yong wasn't affected at all by the anxiety that reigned in those days. Maybe it was because a stranger's identity cloaked him and his world was tangled with codes. Or maybe because he grew up ignorant of the Christian worldview. In any case, he didn't think a god of catastrophe and destruction, if one existed, would appear in that way. Why would he come at a predetermined date? A true disaster would march forth from the unknown, like
Burnham Wood attacking Macbeth's castle. The way Basho's haiku popped up on his screen this morning.

Ki-yong sweeps the items on his desk into his black Samsonite briefcase. Song-gon isn't back yet. He stands up and strides out of the office. With an electronic whir, the door locks automatically behind him. He looks back. A small green light blinks above the keypad. Next to it is a well-known security company's logo of a fine mesh web, connected in sharp angles. He heads to the subway station. Dark clouds billow between buildings, wending along the wrinkles of the city. His car, crouched and still, observes him walking away. Ki-yong encounters more people the closer he gets to the subway station but nobody looks at him. He isn't a man who stands out. Lee Sang-hyok at Liaison Office 130 instructed, "Erase yourself until your alias becomes your second nature. Become someone who is seen, but doesn't leave an impression. You need to be boring, not charming. Always be polite and don't ever argue with anyone, especially about religion and politics. That kind of conversation always creates enemies. You'll slowly fade. From time to time, you'll feel your personality straining to get out from within you. You'll ask yourself, Why should I let myself disappear? Practice and practice again so this question will never present itself in your mind." According to Lee Sang-hyok, repetitive and conscious training, similar to that followed by a Zen monk in eliminating egocentric images, would allow one to reach a point where one could fully erase oneself. It was similar to working on one's golf swing. By relaxing the shoulders and eliminating unnecessary movement, one can swing more gently and efficiently. A spy's mindset and actions can be modified, too. In that sense, Ki-yong was the descendant of Pavlov and Skinner.

"Why do people remember you? Because you annoy them. If you're partial to a loud tie or unusual accessories or have exaggerated gestures, people notice you. Seasoned spies aren't easily caught. Even neighbors who lived next to them for years don't remember them when the police come knocking on their doors. A police sketch becomes a faint outline of an average face. Good spies are like ghosts. People don't notice even if they tap-dance in the street or do the butterfly stroke in the pool."

Ki-yong knows that people have warped ideas about what a spy is—Mata Hari, sex appeal, infiltration and escape tactics, extremely tiny cameras, bribery and appeasement, threats. In truth, all the information gathered by spies is already out in the open. Spying is similar to clipping newspaper articles. The quality of the information culled by spies isn't any better or worse than that. Information covers the sky in a black mass, like migratory birds in early winter. No, Ki-yong thinks, that is too menacing an image. It is more like a flood during rainy seasons, sweeping away objects in its path—a cow trying to swim, a chest door inlaid with mother-of-pearl, a pregnant Berkshire sow, red dirt-filled water bubbling up, timber from a pine tree, the corpse of an impatient hiker, Styrofoam buoys. Ki-yong and his colleagues' assignment was to pull out meaningful information from this flow of facts, then analyze it. Because they read endlessly and organize what they learn, they are as academic as any scholar. It was no accident that the spy Chung Su-il, also known as Khansu, became one of the most renowned scholars on the history of exchanges among civilizations.

The most important asset for a spy isn't the ability to infiltrate or disguise oneself, but to possess an acute sensitivity, an ability to discern the crux of the information from the common barrage of words. Near the end of World War II, a
famous spy received an order from the KGB to report on the German army's deployment. He went to a blanket factory near the Austrian border and asked them all kinds of questions, posing as a blanket seller. By figuring out where the blankets were going, he could piece together the positions held by the German army. The German army's movements were as clear to him as if he were looking at tropical fish in a tank. Most information is not stored in steel safes deep in cloistered rooms, protected by infrared detectors. All the words coming out of someone's mouth and all the written phrases in public documents—these are the crucial clues.

Ki-yong goes down the subway stairs. A beggar is prostrated on the steps, his forehead resting on the floor and his hands outstretched. He holds a sign made of a cardboard ramen box, the letters written forcefully in black marker. The pen strokes, strong and desperately drawn, shriek in sorrow:
I GOT NO LEGS.
Ki-yong passes him by, but then doubles back and drops a 500-won coin in his cup. Unable to lower his head any farther, the beggar bends his back and sticks his rear up in the air in gratitude. It is the first time Ki-yong has ever been charitable. From the entrance above, a strong wind pushes into the subterranean tunnel. A sour smell hits his nose, wafting from the beggar and his dirty cloth backpack. Ki-yong runs down the stairs.

U
NDER CHOL-SU'S
direction, the Passat gently hops the sidewalk, turns elegantly, and backs into the parking space in front of the showroom. Ma-ri likes guys who can park gracefully. Good drivers tend to show off, but a man who knows how to park has a delicacy about him and an ability to concentrate.

Chol-su bids Ma-ri goodbye as he gets out of the car. "It's a nice car. I'll give you a call."

"Please do. Bye."

He gets into his Grandeur and turns on the engine. Ma-ri enters the office. The manager nods in greeting as Ma-ri says, "I'm back."

Another dealer, Kim I-yop, who started working there a year after Ma-ri, smiles brightly and greets her. "How'd it go?

"I didn't see you this morning," Ma-ri comments.

"Tong-il was sick."

"Oh ... So how is he?" Ma-ri regrets her question as soon as it escapes her lips. There is a brief silence.

"Oh, you know. Same as usual." I-yop smiles. His son has malignant lymphoma. Once, I-yop brought him to work, and the kid grinned from ear to ear, so excited to see all the sparkling cars in the showroom. I-yop placed his son in the driver's seat of a car worth more than 100 million won, and the boy happily honked the horn. The year the boy was diagnosed with malignant lymphoma, he was shuttled around to take all sorts of tests. One day, his wife's car barged over the center divider, crashing into a one-ton truck. The airbag didn't deploy and she died instantly. But emergency personnel found the two-year-old fastened in his car seat, smiling, without a single scratch. The insurance company refused to pay out in full because her car had breached the divider, and I-yop sued. The company apparently thought his wife was trying to commit suicide and that she'd purposefully shot over to the other side of the street. It was a plausible theory but nobody knew for sure. When I-yop was at work, his wife's unmarried older sister looked after the boy. Once, he confessed that he would be taken aback at the sight of her when he got home, thinking for a second that his wife was standing there. Well aware of his situation, his colleagues sometimes give him credit for their contracts, which he doesn't refuse. Judging only from his cheery surface, one can't begin to guess at the depths of misfortune that sprang on his family. At times, his cheer feels a little creepy, like the optimistic beginning of a horror movie. If someone came up to her one day and exclaimed, "Kim I-yop hanged himself last night," Ma-ri wouldn't be all that surprised.

Back at her desk, Ma-ri takes out her cell phone and double-checks the text message she received earlier that morning. Her body starts to burn up, the way it does when she
soaks in the tub. Heat travels up in waves from deep within her. She will see him in one hour. They will eat together and she will stare at his lips moving delicately as he chews. Ma-ri touches her face with her hands. Her hands are cool on her hot cheeks.
I'm almost forty. What am I doing?

K
I-YONG BUYS A
ticket and pushes through the turnstiles. Although his credit card doubles as a public transportation card, he consciously chose to purchase a single ticket. A while ago, Ki-yong bumped into a
JoongAng Ilbo
film critic at a movie screening. He told Ki-yong that he'd gone to some screening at Seoul Theater in Chongno. When the critic returned to his office, his phone rang. The person on the line identified himself as an employee of a messenger company, and asked him where they should deliver a package.

"Do you know where Hoam Art Hall is?
JoongAng Ilbo?
Come to the lobby and call up," the critic said.

"Wait, are you a reporter there?"

"Yes, why?"

"Do you know Park Hyong-sok?"

"I'll give you his number. You can call him directly."

"No, it's okay. I'm actually with the Namdaemun Police Department."

"What?"

"This is Detective Hong, Namdaemun Police Department Crime Division. Park's on this beat."

"What's this about?"

"We just want to ask you a few questions. Were you at Chongno sam-ga today around 4:00
P.M.?
"

"Yes."

"Did you see anything out of the ordinary?"

"I don't know, I just went to a film screening."

"Oh, I see. Which movie was it?"

"Why do you need to know that?"

"Oh, never mind. Thank you."

"What's this about?"

"There was a murder right near there today. We're just asking around, so you don't need to be alarmed. Thanks for your cooperation. We should go grab a drink with Park one of these days," the detective said politely, and hung up.

The critic started wondering how the detective knew he had been in Chongno at that time, how he found his phone number, how he knew where to reach him but didn't know anything else about him. He had frequented police stations when he covered metro, so he was pretty familiar with the way the department worked, but he couldn't wrap his mind around this mystery.

He told Ki-yong, tentatively, "It's probably from some surveillance camera footage or something. They're on every subway platform these days."

Ki-yong carefully pointed out the obvious. "How would they find your phone number from a blurry image? And if they knew who you were from the image, they wouldn't have called you like that."

"What do you think happened?" the critic asked, his expression serious. Even a native of capitalism wasn't sure what to make of a situation that could have been written by George Orwell. He was as shocked as Cain hearing God's voice.

"I don't know," Ki-yong replied, but he did know. It was probably the credit cards that doubled as public transportation cards. The police would have narrowed their search to men in their twenties and thirties and questioned all the men fitting the profile who went through the Chongno sam-ga station around that time. Once they even caught a murderer on the loose at 3:00
A.M.
by analyzing the footage
of a speed-monitoring camera on Olympic Highway. Detectives of the Kangnam Police Department surmised that a murderer would have adrenaline pumping through his veins right after committing a crime, that he would be more likely to speed, and their hunch had proven correct.

Ki-yong pretends to drop his ticket on the ground and glances quickly behind him. He feels his gut fold over his belt as he bends down. Once upon a time, he boasted a taut physique with hard muscles, envied by members of the combat team. The very fact that he spent time with the combat agents, professional assassins who specialized in infiltration and escape, meant he was in good shape. But that was a long time ago. He is becoming an average middle-aged South Korean man, his belly round, his chest puny, and his arms jiggly. People relax when they look at his belly. They assume that someone like him can't be a mugger. It's safest to be a man who is uninteresting, neither too old nor young. Someone living a settled life. The kind of man who supports his family but is ignored by them. These ordinary men sometimes take part in risky transactions when the opportunity presents itself, their hearts racing, trying to believe they're safe because everyone does it. They can become mired in a bog of corruption, perhaps in the form of kickbacks, bribery, or slush funds, and they don't foolishly dream that they can wade out of it. Nothing has changed since their college days when they clandestinely studied Kim Il Sung's Juche Idea. Some men say that being involved in politics is like balancing on prison walls—morally precarious. But Ki-yong believes that this is the common fate of all men. Those men who were once bewitched by illegal ideology in college are probably leading the same mundane life as Ki-yong. They would have realized the harsh reality that is capitalism and
quickly given their all to the world into which they were born.

Wading through the most dangerous moment of his life, Ki-yong knows nothing, other than that an order was issued.
I want to know more. I want to know more. I want to know more.
Ki-yong thirsts to know—not what is going on, but whether he is the only target. He needs to know whether the others are aware of what is going on. Why was he given Order 4? Was his identity revealed or did he inadvertently leak something? The two possibilities sound like the same thing, but they are actually very different. If it is the former, the authorities are recalling him for his protection; the latter, to punish him. But there is no way to know which it is until he returns. During the Cold War, the KGB had overseas spies return to Moscow under the pretext of holding an important discussion, then killed them. A furnace waited for the moles who aided the enemy. The shamed spies were slowly slid into the smelter's melting iron, surrounded by their colleagues, like the Terminator. Of course, sometimes there really was a discussion, and afterward they would be sent back out again.
I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know a thing.
Ki-yong has no idea what is happening. He has been living as a forgotten spy since Lee Sang-hyok was purged. As he hasn't engaged in very many activities there hasn't been much chance to be discovered. But you never know. It is possible that he unwittingly made a fatal error, or it could always be a misunderstanding. Anyway, he has less than a day. He has to find something out, anything, before the deadline. There has to be a clue somewhere.
I'm sure there was some kind of sign but I just didn't notice it. What happened to me in the past few days? Was there an odd phone call or a stranger following me? If there had been, wouldn't I have noticed it?
No, his
senses could have been dulled because he's been living complacently for so long.