The old general and Commissar Oh had their backs turned toward us. Hero Kang stood with his arms at his side, defeated. The security guards at the exits started to advance. The beautiful Senior Captain Rhee Mi-sook reappeared out of one of the side doors. Hero Kang and I spotted her at the same time.
We would fight. I looked around for weapons. There were none, except for a rickety straight-backed chair. I could break it apart and make a club for each of us. We would go down fighting. That would be better than imprisonment, or torture.
Just then, like a man electrified, Hero Kang turned away from the approaching security people and walked toward the departing general. His booming voice filled the gymnasium.
“Wait!” he shouted. Everyone stopped and turned to listen. “The officer,” he said, pointing back at me, “the officer from Romania, the winner of the foreigner’s tournament, he wants to offer a challenge.”
Commissar Oh raised his cigarette to his lips. It was an effeminate move, reminding me of a manicured housewife absorbed in her favorite soap opera. While everyone waited, Commissar Oh said, “Oh yes, Great Hero Kang? And what sort of challenge does this officer from Romania have to offer?”
“He was unable to display the full measure of his skills,” Hero Kang replied, speaking so everyone in the hall could hear him. “He was forced to compete against an inferior opponent and under such circumstances true expertise cannot come to the fore.”
I believe at this moment Commissar Oh had already anticipated what Hero Kang was about to say. A half smile twisted his fleshy lips.
“This officer from Romania,” Hero Kang continued, “asks the permission of the great general of the people, and the permission of our Great Leader, for another match.” Hero Kang waved toward the white-clad Koreans who were about to put on a display of true expertise for the assembled audience. “The officer from Romania challenges the champion of the People’s Army First Corps!”
A murmur of disbelief rippled through the crowd. Commissar Oh smiled and then conferred with the general. Enthusiastically, the old man nodded his consent. Hero Kang exhaled deeply as General Yi and Commissar Oh returned to their seats.
A phalanx of Taekwondo experts approached the center of the gym. Their leader, a muscular man with a face and a body of stone, stepped forward. Hero Kang hurried to my side.
“His name is Pak,” Hero Kang told me. “Fifth-level black belt.”
“I have to beat him? ” I asked.
“Yes. If the Manchurian Battalion is to survive, if you are to make Doctor Yong In-ja your wife, if you are to save the life of your son, then you must win.”
“And if I don’t?”
Hero Kang shrugged. “It is over.” He glanced toward the beautiful Captain Rhee. She stood leaning against a wall, her arms crossed and the brim of her black leather cap pulled down low over her eyes.
I studied my opponent. Slowly, easily, he was limbering himself up, not bothering to look at me. Legs spread apart, he touched his forehead to the floor, and finally the champion of the First Corps raised his gaze. His eyes were black and I saw in them nothing but determination. Determination and death.
5
When First Corps champion Pak’s foot came down on my forehead, I literally did not see it coming. Later, my mind recreated the blur of the foot rising and crashing down on me, but by then it was too late. Too late for a lot of things.
The referee allowed me to get back to my feet, but then the attack started again, unrelenting and impossible to stop. I was nowhere close to being in this man’s league. I held up my arms, circled backward, did my best to stay out of his range, but all I was doing was running. First Corps Champion Pak could land a blow whenever the spirit moved him.
The gym was silent. This wasn’t a competition; it was slaughter.
Finally, somehow, the round ended. Hero Kang rushed to the center of the ring and pulled me to the sidelines. He slapped my face.
“Can you hear me?” he asked, staring directly into my eyes.
“I can hear you,” I replied.
“He didn’t take you out in the first round,” Kang told me, “out of respect for General Yi. On the other hand, after one round of entertainment, it would be disrespectful to let this slaughter go on. As soon as you step back out there with him, he will carry you for maybe thirty seconds, then he will drop you.”
“Yes,” I said, nodding.
Hero Kang slapped me. Hard. Faces from the audience gawked. He leaned closer to me, embracing me, hissing in my ear. “You must win!”
“Win?”
“Yes, win. If you don’t, the Manchurian Battalion will be doomed.” He studied me, not liking what he saw. “If you don’t win,” he continued, “you will never see Doctor Yong In-ja again. You will never see your son, the one who carries your name, the one who carries the blood of your family. You must win.”
The words seemed odd, alien to me somehow: first “son,” then “win.” Hero Kang twisted my head until I was gazing at Senior Captain Rhee Mi-sook and the fixers who were waiting, guarding the exits. “Look,” he ordered.
“They’ll capture us,” I said dully.
“Yes.”
“And we’ll be tortured,” I said.
“That too. But if you win, we will be under the protection of Commissar Oh and the fixers won’t be able to touch us. You must win.”
I gazed at the twisted flesh of his perspiring face. “How?” I asked.
“How what?”
“How do I win?”
“Forget Taekwondo,” he said. “Forget everything. Just think of getting out of here. Think of not being tortured. Think of life.”
I remembered feeling like I felt now, once, long ago. There were bad boys in my neighborhood, bigger and meaner. They would waylay smaller kids and steal coins we might have squirreled away in our blue jeans. They’d twist our arms and pinch us until we cried. I hated them; I was willing to do anything, pay any price, to avenge myself and the other kids. And then I’d discovered the Los Angeles sheriff’s athletic program at the Main Street Gym. A few good deputies took the time to teach us scrawny Mexican kids how to box. How to throw a left jab, how to counter with a right, how to hold our punches until there was an opening and then connect with our arms straight, our fists tight.
“You must fight! ” Hero Kang hissed again. “Forget Taekwondo. Forget everything. Fight for your life.”
The whistle sounded. I found myself back in the center of the ring. A kick came out of nowhere. And then I was flying.
Hero Kang had been fifteen years old when he joined the Manchurian Battalion. They gave him a rifle, cloth shoes, a down-filled jacket, and along with a group of new recruits, he was ordered south through the swirling Korean winter to fight the Yankee imperialists. Doc Yong told me the full story, both the official myth and the truth as best she knew it.
Hero Kang immediately fell under the guidance of Bandit Lee. His real name was Lee Ryong-un and he had led the Manchurian Battalion since the early days when they raided the Japanese Imperial Army and stole food, fuel, and medical supplies to distribute to the starving Korean communities in the hinterlands of the Manchurian wilderness. Years later, during the Korean War, Bandit Lee led a battalion of hardened foot soldiers-soldiers who faced the U.S. Army near the 38th parallel and suffered the brunt of vicious air and artillery assaults.
“The way we fight,” Bandit Lee told the man who would become Hero Kang, “is we dig in like moles during the day and at night we creep close to the Americans. So close that they can’t use their big guns or their airpower. Then we fight them with bayonets if we can, bullets if we have to.”
