Joy Brigade (26 page)

I climbed up to the edge of the irrigation canal. It was the mud-spattered old woman, running and screaming—sour-stemmed herbs falling out of her pockets—alerting the entire commune of the Eastern Star about the presence of a Yankee imperialist.

I stepped up on solid ground and started to run.

They caught me before I reached the Kwangju Mountains. A work party of young farmers, all armed with hoes and rakes and wickedly curved scythes. I fought, but the sheer weight of them overwhelmed me.

One of them produced some hemp rope and they trussed me up and tied me to a thick pole and carried me like a dead boar back to the main square of the commune. In the central administrative building, they shoved me into an iron-barred cell that looked just like a Hollywood hoosegow. It was furnished only with a low straw-covered bunk and a metal bucket for a toilet.

After they untied me, I sat on the straw for about an hour, standing as often as I could because of the bugs practicing their broad jump. Finally, two uniformed men arrived. They shackled me with proper metal handcuffs and metal ankle bracelets and perp-walked me down stone steps into a basement. Actually, it was made of hewn rock and looked more like a dungeon. A single yellow bulb hung from the center of the ceiling. They sat me on a metal bench and then left, the iron-reinforced wooden door clanging shut behind them. I studied my surroundings. Nothing here except the bench and a barred window overhead with the glass painted black.

I sat and waited.

It seemed like days. Finally, the door opened.

Leather boots appeared on the stone steps. Soon her face came into view: Senior Captain Rhee Mi-sook, the woman who’d been haunting me since I first arrived in North Korea.

Her eyes were sad, and her full lips pouted.

“Now,” she said in English. “At last.”

She slipped off her leather coat, revealing a statuesque figure clad in tight black pants and blouse. From the pocket of the coat she pulled out a short leather whip. Then she turned to me and smiled, flicking the whip in front of her.

“Are you ready for some fun?” she said.

12

S
enior Captain Rhee Mi-sook set the whip aside and reached into the deep pocket of her leather coat, pulling out an ivory-handled knife. She pressed a button and the blade popped up with a snap. Heels clicking, she crossed the brick floor and stood in front of me.

“You’re
filthy
,” she said, loathing in her voice. “Stand!” she ordered in Korean. I did. She didn’t move away. Our bodies were practically touching. I was a head taller but she gazed up at me angrily, her soft lips curled in disgust. Deftly, she sliced my hemp tunic and pantaloons. With the long nails of her left hand she ripped the clothing off me. Finally, after she’d peeled off the last of my undergarments, I stood naked.

With the gleaming tip of the blade, she touched my
chest. Pressing only hard enough to slice the first few layers of skin, she ran the tip of the blade down my body, across my stomach, stopping just as she reached my pubic hair. As she held the point of the blade there, ready to jab, she gazed into my eyes—searching, I believe, for fear.

She found it. Then she stepped back and hollered for the guards. Two men entered, both carrying wooden pails sloshing with water. Without hesitation they tossed the water on me. It was freezing. Before I could regain my breath, more men entered. They doused me with more water and rubbed my back and chest with some sort of harsh-smelling soap. Someone produced a thick-bristled brush, scrubbing my flesh, scratching it, almost peeling it off. I tried to shove them back, but there were too many of them.

They kicked the straw-covered cot out of the way and I fell to my knees. When they were done, I lay in a bloody mass of suds on the cold stone floor.

When I awoke, it was night. A metal lamp with a soft red bulb had been brought into the chamber. The tip of an insistent boot roused me awake. With a start, I sat up.

Senior Captain Rhee Mi-sook gazed down at me. She wasn’t wearing her uniform now but rather a loose blue smock made of some sort of diaphanous material.

“Irrona,”
she said. Get up.

I did.

She stepped closer and in the dim red glow examined the bruises and scratches on my body.

“Did they hurt you?”

she asked. “No,” I replied.

Since my capture, she’d spoken only Korean to me. I wasn’t yet ready to admit that I understood English. It was foolish, I suppose. Eventually she’d find out that I didn’t speak Romanian and she’d figure out who I was, but all my training told me to stall for time, to give away nothing until I had to.

She stepped closer to me.

“You smell like lye,” she said in English.

I didn’t reply.

She leaned in so close to me that the tip of her nose was almost touching my chest. “But you’re clean,” she said in Korean.

Again, I didn’t respond.

Her lips parted, a moist tongue slithering out. And then she was kissing me, starting at my neck, working her way down.

Upstairs, a man screamed.

“Who’s that?” I said.

“Your friend,” she replied dreamily.

Moon Chaser.

He screamed again. And it was indeed him.

As the soft lips and probing tongue of Captain Rhee Mi-sook explored every part of my body, Moon Chaser’s screams of agony grew louder.

“You’re torturing him,” I said.

“Yes,” she murmured.

“You must stop.”

“When I’m ready.”

“When will that be?” I asked.

“When you tell me everything.”

I didn’t answer. Moon Chaser kept screaming. Captain Rhee Mi-sook’s soft tongue kept probing.

In the morning they fed me noodles. That night, a bowl of rice laced with turnip greens. In between, I was allowed all the barley tea I could drink. The purpose, I believed, was to keep me healthy. Captain Rhee and I engaged in two sessions a day, for three days. I told her nothing. All the while, during each assignation, Moon Chaser was tortured. It was a technique the North Koreans had used before: torture one man and let the guilt grow in another. Eighth Army had taught me to keep my feelings compartmentalized. Never blame yourself for what someone else was doing, in this case torturing a man who had risked his life for you. I tried, but it didn’t work. After one particularly hideous session, I broke down.

In English, I said, “That’s enough. You hear me? That’s enough!”

Captain Rhee’s eyes widened in mock surprise.

“I want you to stop torturing him.” When she didn’t respond, I took a deep breath and said, “I’m from Eighth Army.”

Unconcerned, Captain Rhee toyed with the sparse hair on my chest. “I know that,” she replied.

“Will you stop torturing him if I confess?”

“I’ll think about it.”

Moon Chaser was still screaming, so I confessed. Rapidly. Most of what I said bored her. About Hero Kang and Commissar Oh and Hero Kang’s daughter, Hye-kyong,
and how they’d both died heroically. About the Manchurian Battalion and how they were seen as being too independent and how the Dear Leader was set on destroying them. All the while, she tried to distract me with her long fingers and her nibbling at various parts of me. I wondered what they’d done to her to make her this way. And then she told me.

She’d been selected from among thousands of girls, for being smart, for being pretty. A cadre of apparatchiks had traveled around the country, checking school records, listening to talent recitals of little girls singing and dancing and praising the glorious work of the Great Leader.

“I played the violin,” she said. “A composition written by the Great Leader himself, although my music teacher let slip once that it had actually been written by Bach. At the time, I didn’t believe him. I was only fourteen. They took me to Pyongyang for training and more education. When I was seventeen, the Great Leader visited me himself.”

“Alone?”

“Very alone. I didn’t know he was coming. He appeared suddenly in my room. Everything was quiet. I believe the entire dormitory had been evacuated. Outside, a ring of cars and soldiers protected the area.”

I studied her, looking for signs of outrage or sadness or even pride. I saw nothing. But she answered my unspoken question.

“I was a virgin,” she said. “He was old. Things didn’t work out so well.”

“You were expelled from the Joy Brigade?”

“Put in the army. The Great Leader wanted to make sure that if I talked, I knew I would be shot.”

“Did you talk?”

“Never.”

“Then why are you talking to me?”

“You are a foreigner. No one understands you and no one believes you. You don’t count.”

“Also,” I said, “I will die soon.”

“Yes. That’s another reason.” She stared up at the stone ceiling, lost in thought. Then she said, “In the army, every man used me.”

I waited, not moving.

“All the old colonels first, they each had their turn, with their weak bodies and their cold hands. And then the junior officers. I was lost, not knowing what to do. Shocked that I, who had dedicated my life to the Great Leader, was being betrayed like this. I knew that if the Great Leader were aware of their treachery, he would stop them and punish them all. But he wasn’t there. I was alone.”

“You had no one to turn to?” I asked.

“No one.” She seemed slightly astonished. “A woman alone in the army, purposely kept away from other females. I was told to follow orders, to keep my mouth shut, that was all. I thought of killing myself. Of pulling out my pistol and ending it all, but I knew that would be seen as a direct insult to the Great Leader and my family would be punished. I couldn’t do that. Finally, I found some inner strength from somewhere and I decided to change. Not to change the men who were using me but to change myself. If they loved me, if they loved my face, my hands, my body, I would use that as my power. Once I made that decision, I felt free—and strong. I became more aware of my surroundings and started to search out the
men who made the real decisions, the men with power, the men who could protect me.”

“The commissars,” I said.

“Yes. And that’s when I started to get what I wanted. Better working conditions, promotions, jobs with more authority.”

“And now you’re a fixer,” I said.

“Who told you that?”

I shrugged.

“No matter,” she replied. “Someday, I will be a commissar myself.” She turned to me and smiled, her sweet, beautiful smile. “But first, you will help me take down the Manchurian Battalion. All the things you’ve told me so far, I already know. I need you to tell me more. Why did the Manchurian Battalion bring you here? Who was your initial contact? What are their plans?”

Most of the questions she asked, I wouldn’t have been able to answer even if I wanted to. But I also knew that in the intelligence business a little information from one source could be pieced together with information from another source to create a comprehensive picture of the whole. When I claimed ignorance, sometimes honestly, she used the whip on me. I did my best not to cry out.

They were still torturing Moon Chaser. His screams had been reverberating through my skull for days. It was my fault he’d been caught. It was my fault he was suffering. Finally, I couldn’t take it any longer. I broke down and told Captain Rhee about the manuscript of the wild man. She sat up as I spoke. I knew I’d caught her interest.