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.
