slammed his nose and teeth against my knee. As he collapsed, I lost my grip and he tumbled, arms flailing, down the steps.
Doc Yong shrieked.
I clasped my hand over her mouth. Wide-eyed, she nodded that she was okay. I straightened my tunic and cap and, hand in hand, we trotted down the steps. The second fixer lay in a heap at the bottom. I checked his carotid artery.
“Strong pulse,” I told her.
She nodded, looking relieved. We crossed the short entranceway and peeked out the double doors. All clear. The fixers, apparently, traveled in pairs, not squads. As we stepped outside, Doc Yong glanced around, getting her bearings. I followed her down a dark alleyway, watching as she adjusted her backpack. The terror of what had just happened to us was gradually draining from my body, making me want to throw up. I fought the feeling and instead glanced at Doc Yong. We were both frightened but overjoyed to be free.
At least for the moment.
Boot heels surrounded us. Giant cement boot heels. We’d hidden in the middle of a massive megalithic monument. A group of revolutionaries-a soldier, a factory worker, a farmer, and a woman holding a rifle-rose thirty feet above us. A circle of light illuminated the outside of the heroic structure, but here, in the center of the monument, it was dark.
“What’s it called in English?” Doc Yong asked.
“A fallback position.”
“Right. A fallback position. Hero Kang told me to come here if something went wrong.”
And it had gone wrong. The fixers had somehow gotten wind that a foreigner was staying in that particular room. They hadn’t searched any of the other rooms in the building. If they had, I would’ve heard boots pounding and doors slamming throughout the thin wooden structure. Probably the two men had sniffed out a lead and rather than informing their superiors they’d tried to take us on their own. If they’d been more patient, and merely put us under surveillance, a larger group of fixers could’ve been summoned and then we would’ve been caught. As it was, we were lucky to be free. And now I knew something more about the fixers than I had before. They were undisciplined. Undisciplined can be good, sometimes, but it can also be dangerous.
I rose from my squatting position and peeked at the empty streets radiating from this monument like spokes from a hub. No sign of the fixers. But nor any sign of Hero Kang.
“Be patient,” she said. “He will be along.”
“When?”
“At dawn.”
The fixers had probably found their injured comrades by now. Although we were over a mile away, it wouldn’t take them long to include this area in their search.
And then it started to snow. Doc Yong and I huddled together, she doing her best to cover me with her hood, I wishing I had some good old-fashioned GI-issue winter gear to keep us warm. Doc Yong used the time to complete my briefing-partially, I’m sure, to keep our minds off our misery. I listened patiently, enjoying the nearness of her, and at the same time keeping a weather eye out for approaching fixers.
She told me of a group of people called the Manchurian Battalion, of which she was a member. They were one of the original units of the Korean People’s Army, she whispered, snuggled next to my neck. The Manchurian Battalion had started in the thirties, long before the founding of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, as a ragtag group of bandits and malcontents who fled to the mountains to avoid the heavy boot of the Japanese Imperial Army’s occupation of their country. They’d fought back sporadically, but it hadn’t been easy. The Japanese formed special antiguerilla task forces that hounded them through the northern provinces of Korea and into the vast wilderness of Manchuria. The peasants whom they relied on were harassed mercilessly, rounded up, not allowed to grow crops. Starvation was rampant. Despite heavy losses, the Manchurian Battalion survived and kept fighting. Finally, at the end of World War II, the Japanese were defeated and forced to withdraw from all of their conquests in the Far East, including Korea.
Kim Il-sung, the Great Leader, had been comrades with the leaders of the Manchurian Battalion, and in later years, even through the chaos of the Korean War, the Manchurian Battalion maintained a certain level of autonomy. Now, they guarded the passes that led to Mount O-song in the Kwangju range, flush against the northern edge of the DMZ’s Military Demarcation Line.
“There is much pressure on the Manchurian Battalion,” Doc Yong told me. “Kim Il-sung is consolidating power, preparing for the transition to his son’s leadership. His advisors tell him that his old comrades in the Manchurian Battalion are untrustworthy, that they will not accept his son’s leadership, and will attempt to take power themselves. This is a lie. Still, we believe the Manchurian Battalion is marked for destruction. The forces arrayed against us are overwhelming, but Hero Kang has devised a plan that can save us.”
“And you trust him?” I asked.
“Completely.”
That was good enough for me. She took my hand in hers. The skin was no longer soft, as it had been in Seoul; now there was an extra layer of roughness.
“We need information,” she told me. “Information that Hero Kang will guide you to. But only a foreigner can gain final access.”
“Only a foreigner?” I asked.
“Yes. There is a man, a well-connected apparatchik, his name is Commissar Oh. Our information is that he and the commander of the Army’s First Corps have been tasked with dealing with the Manchurian Battalion.”
“Dealing with them?”
“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
