“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.
“Stop torturing him now,” I said.
She snapped her fingers. A guard came in. She barked the order, and two minutes later the screaming stopped.
“Tell me,” she commanded.
I told her of the tunnel through the Kwangju Mountains, impossible to discover except by the “wild man” who seemed to have some sixth sense that guided him through the bowels of the earth.
“It leads where?” she asked me breathlessly.
I was about to tell her when a bomb went off.
Quickly, she slipped back into her clothes, pulled on her boots, and ran outside. I sat on the metal bench, listening to the gunfire all around me, men shouting in anger and in terror.
A half-hour later, armed men burst into the dungeon. Some of them were spattered with blood. All of them were dirty and perspiration dripped from their foreheads. One of them held a ring of keys and he knelt and unshackled me. I was still naked.
Doctor Yong In-ja, holding a Kalashnikov rifle across her chest, strode between the men. “Find him some clothes,” she ordered. “Then bring him.”
Without saying a word to me, she swiveled and returned to the fight.
The redoubt high on the edge of Mount O-song was carefully camouflaged. Canvas netting strewn with weeds covered most of the buildings and some of them were sheltered beneath natural rock overhangs.
Doc Yong personally supervised my recovery. It didn’t take long. Most of my wounds were superficial. The avaricious Senior Captain Rhee Mi-sook had merely exhausted me. It was Moon Chaser who’d been methodically ripped to shreds. The soldiers of the Manchurian Battalion rescued him from the Eastern Star Commune but he hadn’t survived the retreat up into the Kwangju Mountains. His body was carried the rest of the way and buried, with honors, within one of the grave mounds reserved for the martyrs of the Manchurian Battalion.
When I was well enough, Doc Yong introduced me to Il-yong, the First Dragon, my son. My first glimpse of him was like an awakening in my soul. Now I lived for him, not for myself. He was a bright-eyed boy who loved to smile. I thought he looked like her. She said he looked like me. He noticed everything and I told Doc Yong that that part was definitely like her. I prayed that he’d inherited her brains.
The raid on the Eastern Star Commune had killed a few North Korean soldiers and chased the rest away, including, presumably, Senior Captain Rhee Mi-sook. Immediately, I told Doc Yong everything I knew about the plan to deploy the Red Star Brigade first to a village near Hamhung, and then from there up into the Kwangju Mountains for the assault on the Manchurian Battalion. She nodded gravely. That matched intelligence they’d already gathered.
I spilled my guts about the order of battle and the notes that I’d taken in the catacombs of the Joy Brigade. Somehow, in all the madness since then, the notes had been lost.
“Here,” Doc Yong said, sitting me at a wooden desk and handing me a pencil and a pad of paper. “Put down everything you can remember.” She poured me a cup of barley tea and left the room. The silence grew. I remembered Beikyang and the red star hitting the butt of a white goat, but after that, not much.
Eventually, I gave up and found Doc Yong.
“Keep trying,” she said. “Maybe in your dreams some of it will come back to you.”
I also told her about Hero Kang and his daughter, Hye-kyong, and the holding action of assaulting the petroleum transport convoy.
Another ceremony was held, honoring them. A single carved memorial was erected.
At night, Doc Yong and I lay in bed together. Beside us, on a small mat, Il-yong breathed softly. I lay awake, staring at the moonlight seeping through an oil-papered window, my happiness complete. Or almost. Thoughts of Senior Captain Rhee Mi-sook remained, like a she-demon stalking me.
During the day, with Il-yong strapped to Doc Yong’s back, she gave me a complete tour of the grounds. To the north, twin peaks protected the mountain valley from the cold winds. To the south loomed Mount O-song. Thus sheltered, the valley had a surprisingly temperate climate that allowed the men and women of the Manchurian Battalion to work the land and raise many of their own crops. Not rice but cabbage and turnips and carrots and even a small grove of pear trees. The streams provided some fish, and for the rest of their sustenance, they traded with the collective farms in the valley below. Sometimes, when out of political favor, they had to travel far afield to purchase the rations that the central government supposedly provided free. But they had allies everywhere; people who secretly admired not only the valiant history of the Manchurian Battalion but also their independence.
Everywhere I went, people bowed to me and smiled. Doc Yong had been raised in South Korea and knew the truth about the government down there. It was corrupt and had its faults, and the southern economy was still suffering from the devastation of the Korean War, but fundamentally people were free. Doc Yong had spoken of these things at village meetings and reassured the leadership that the Americans were no longer the enemy of the North Korean people. Compromises could be reached. Peace negotiated. The United States, she promised everyone, was reasonable. Most importantly, the U.S. might be able to help the Manchurian Battalion maintain their independence.
That’s why I received so many smiles.
I thought of these things as I lay in bed next to Doc Yong. My belly was full with roast mackerel and kokktugi,
