Joy Brigade (10 page)

“Eliminating them,” she said. “That is what we believe. But action must be taken soon, before the winter freeze, before the planned invasion of the South.”

“You’re sure of this?”

“We’re not sure of anything,” Doc Yong told me. “Our information is spotty, from multiple sources. We need to know more. We need to know when and where the First Corps is planning to strike. That’s why we need you.”

I brushed snow off her shoulders.

“Commissar Oh is a secretive man,” she continued. “That’s one of the reasons he was chosen for this mission. But he also has his vanities. Every year, he and the First Corps commander sponsor a foreigners-only Taekwondo tournament. The winner is invited into the inner sanctum of something called the Joy Brigade. That’s where our agent is waiting. She needs help to obtain the information. Once you gain the trust of Commissar Oh, she will contact you.”

“She?”

“Yes. The Joy Brigade is composed strictly of women. Once you have the information, she will lead you to Hero Kang and he will, in turn, help you escape and lead you to the Manchurian Battalion.”

I thought of what she was saying, of how dangerous it would be, all the while staring down the spokes of the wheel that surrounded us. All was dark, quiet, unmoving, except for the silently falling shroud of snow.

“Where will you be?” I asked.

“In the Kwangju Mountains with the Manchurian Battalion. They are my protectors and they are the ones who guard the caves that lead to the passageway beneath the DMZ.”

I gripped her small shoulders and stared into her eyes. “But why don’t we escape now? Go to the Manchurian Battalion, find the passageway beneath the Kwangju Mountains? Then we will be free and we can convince Eighth Army to help with weapons and ammunition, maybe with ground troops.”

“That’s what we hoped before, but there is so little time. The attack on the Manchurian Battalion could happen at any moment. And who knows if the Americans will act quickly enough, or act at all?”

She was right about that. The motives of the American Army were often obscure, even to me.

“So we are fighting for time,” she continued. “If you can obtain this information and pass it to Hero Kang, we can sabotage their plans, delay the First Corps attack long enough to seek American help. But if we escape now, if you and I run off to the Kwangju Mountains and manage
to reach South Korea, the Manchurian Battalion will be destroyed.”

She allowed me time to let this sink in. I could see her point. If this planned attack by the First Corps was delayed, or nullified, that would allow us time to make our way south and convince Eighth Army to reinforce the Manchurian Battalion. Still, I wasn’t exactly sure who these Manchurian Battalion people were and why I should be worried about them. After all, they were Communists, supposedly, my avowed enemy.

“They are my people,” Doc Yong told me, as if she were reading my mind. “I must help them.”

“Your people?” In the ambient glow of the electric bulbs surrounding the monument, I studied her eyes.

“They are the ones who helped me in South Korea,” she said. “The ones who, through their agents, paid for my education. They are the ones who helped me avenge the murder of my parents.”

It was that series of killings against a group of thugs who ran the red-light district of Itaewon in Seoul that had forced Doctor Yong In-ja to seek asylum in the DPRK.

“Your parents were members of the Manchurian Battalion.”

She nodded.

This time I looked away. “And if I decide not to help?”

“Then I will do my best to get you out of North Korea. I will show you the directions in the ancient manuscript and take you as far as I can into the tunnels. After that, you will be on your own.”

“You won’t come?”

“No. I will stay and fight with the Manchurian Battalion.”

“You won’t win,” I said.

“No. Probably not.”

Then she took my hand and placed it on her belly. After having spent the last few hours with her, I was certain she’d borne a child—the child I suspected she’d been pregnant with when she’d fled South Korea a year ago. Still, she hadn’t spoken of it and I hadn’t pressed her.

“We have a child,” I said.

“Yes,” she replied. “A son. His name is Il-yong. The First Dragon. He is full of life, and full of fire. So much like you.”

It took me a moment to adjust to this new reality, although I had suspected it. Finally, I said, “We should leave, escape from North Korea, the three of us. You, me, Il-yong.”

“I can’t,” she said. “Not until the Manchurian Battalion has at least a fighting chance.” She clutched my hand more tightly. “Will you help us?”

Before I could answer, she pulled a photograph out of her backpack.

What is it about children, about our own flesh and blood, that moves us so? As I studied the photograph, she clutched my hand tightly. He was an aware-looking child, bright, his little fists clenched, his eyes staring straight into the camera.

I handed the photograph back to Doc Yong.

The chances of us surviving, any of us, were slim. The North Korean regime, when it felt threatened, had proven itself to be ruthlessly efficient. Still, now that I’d seen my son, now that I knew I had a family, I knew I’d never abandon them, not like my father had abandoned me. If it came to that, I’d rather die first.

“I’ll help,” I said finally.

An automobile engine rumbled, growing ever louder. I peeked over the cement toe of the heroic factory worker. A beat-up old Russian sedan, probably left over from the Stalin era, cruised slowly around the monument. Doc Yong sat up.

“It’s him,” she said. “Come on.”

We clambered over the massive foot of the monument and ran toward the vehicle. It stopped. Now I could see clearly the man sitting behind the wheel. Hero Kang.

“Bali,”
he said, opening the door and climbing out. Hurry. “Let’s go before those fixer bastards and their lead bitch get a bead on us.”

Their lead bitch?

“Here,” Hero Kang said. “Put this on.” He tossed a black overcoat and a black chauffeur’s cap to Doc Yong.

She handed her cape and her backpack to me and I shoved them into the backseat of the car. After she’d slipped the overcoat and the chauffeur’s cap on, Hero Kang handed her a pair of white gloves. She slipped those on also.

As if she were born to it, Doc Yong climbed behind the wheel, adjusted the seat, and started up the engine. Hero Kang, positioning himself proudly in his usual military uniform, sat up front next to her. I crouched in the backseat. Doc Yong shifted the tank-like engine into gear and we lurched forward.

As we pulled away from the monument, I glanced back at one of the dark alleys. In one, a lonely figure stood. A woman with long, straight hair, wearing a leather cap and a leather jacket, hands shoved deep into her pockets. She seemed to be staring straight into my eyes.

“Who’s that?” I asked.

The car swerved and Hero Kang and Doc Yong glanced to where I pointed. But now the alley was empty.

“What?” Hero Kang asked.

“There was a woman standing there,” I replied. “A woman in military uniform.”

“You’re imagining things,” Hero Kang said.

But I knew I hadn’t imagined anything. The woman standing in the alley had been the same beautiful officer I’d seen outside the room where Doc Yong and I had been holed up.

The big Russian engine growled angrily as Doc Yong shifted gears and we left the monument behind. Slowly, we wound through broad lanes. The plan was that after Doc Yong dropped us off, she’d ditch the car, resume the role of a peasant woman traveling to visit relatives, and return to a place of safety in the Kwangju Mountains.

Hero Kang told me to sit up straight.

“Remember,” he told me. “You’re an officer. A hero in your own country. Everyone else is nothing. Less than nothing.”

I sat up straighter in the seat and thrust my shoulders back, smoothing out the wrinkles in my Warsaw Pact uniform as best I could, staring about imperiously. Not that anyone noticed. In the distance, work groups carrying hoes and rakes marched through the gloom like military units.

We turned onto a massive road lined with monuments to the Great Leader and to the struggles of the North Korean people against the Japanese colonists and the American imperialists. Freezing fog and the slowly rising
sun cast the quiet city in a somber red glow. Eerily, there were no other cars out yet, except for one military vehicle that whizzed past us. At the larger intersections, even at this early hour, attractive young women in police uniforms with skirts just barely covering their knees pirouetted and pointed and waved, blowing their whistles and coordinating an elaborate flow of imaginary traffic.

“She must be freezing,” I said, as we passed one.

“Yes,” Doc Yong replied. “Poor thing.”

“You’re an officer!” Hero Kang barked, aiming his rebuke at me. “You have no time for sympathy.” Then he turned to Doc Yong. “Have you briefed him?”

“Thoroughly.”

What he meant was had she convinced me to go through with all this. She had. Still, I longed to turn this vehicle toward the Kwangju Mountains, find my son, and escape with him and Doc Yong beneath the DMZ to freedom. But that would have to wait.

We turned down a side street, narrower than the rest, and wound slowly up into wooded hills. Finally, we reached a huge building, as broad as an aircraft carrier, but elaborately carved and splashed with the bright colors of an ancient royal palace. A red wooden arch was painted with golden hangul letters that said
Inmin jayu undong gong
. The Palace of the People’s Freedom Movement. Yellow-eyed dragons with green-scaled bodies slid red tongues past ivory fangs.

At the main entranceway, four armed soldiers saluted. Two of them stepped forward smartly and opened the side doors. Hero Kang and I climbed out. Before we marched up the granite steps, I turned and caught Doc Yong’s eyes.
She stared back, worried. I smiled and winked and she nodded slightly. Then I turned and walked past the North Korean soldiers, not looking back.

Steam billowed upward in moist, warm clouds. Hero Kang lay naked on a massage table covered in white linen. I sat on wet stone being scrubbed with a stiff sponge by a faithful female follower of the Great Leader of the people. She went about the job with all the joy of a butcher preparing a hog for slaughter.

Hero Kang’s masseuse wore only a coarse white towel pinned around her shapely body and a smaller towel piled atop her head like an ancient Egyptian headdress. My attendant wore a stiff cotton medical smock buttoned meticulously to the top of her neck.

I wanted to ask Hero Kang why we were being treated differently, but I didn’t want these women, or anyone in this massive gymnasium, to know I spoke Korean. Besides, I thought I knew the answer. Hero Kang was a revered hero of the people. I, on the other hand, was something putrid, to be cleansed and purified. In short, I was a foreigner. In North Korea, even those foreigners who were political allies, such as an officer of the Warsaw Pact, were considered objectionable, not of the “pure race” and, in most people’s eyes, less than human.

We’d been fed earlier with expensive white rice, not the coarse brown rice or thick-fibered corn most North Koreans ate, and with savory side dishes: cabbage kimchi, diced turnip, pickled cucumber, and
bulkogi
, grilled slices of marinated beef. Now I was being washed. All of this
pampering, I thought, was simply preparing me for the kill.

Hero Kang moaned in pleasure as his masseuse dug her pudgy fingers into the muscles at the base of his neck. My attendant dropped her sponge in a bucket and slipped on a glove of coarse, wiry cloth. Pointing, she ordered me to lie down on the stone. I did. She slapped soapy water on my back and then, with a vengeance, began to scrub. I winced in pain and started to rise, but she shoved me back down with her free hand. She was surprisingly strong. I could’ve thrown her off, but I decided that I was man enough to take it. I lay back down, clenched my teeth, and vowed not to show weakness.

I’d seen gloves like this one in South Korea. They were designed to clean the skin so thoroughly that they scraped off the first layer of flesh and sometimes the second and third. Dirt and oil built up in the pores appears like magic atop the reddened skin in black, rubbery pellets, which the Koreans call
ddei
. The woman scrubbed and scrubbed and whole handfuls of
ddei
appeared.
“Toryowoyo,”
she said. Dirty.

“Yangnom da kurei,”
the masseuse replied. All foreign louts are the same.

Hero Kang laughed, his massive back shaking. “How do you know?” he asked them. “How many foreign louts have you scrubbed?”

The masseuse didn’t answer. Instead, she slapped him playfully on the butt, her face reddening at her own boldness.

Grimly, my female torturer ordered me to roll over. I obeyed. When she finally ordered me to stand up, my
entire body was as red and as raw as a lobster without its shell. Holding my arms away from my body so as not to irritate the inflamed flesh, I hobbled over to the huge tub filled with steaming water that she was pointing to. When I’d lowered myself to my shoulders, she grabbed the top of my head and shoved me under. I came up sputtering.