“Nobody’s denying prudence, Bruce, but isn’t it true that the longer we wait, the more the danger of it spreading? I mean this war between Vietnam and China.”
“I think it’s more likely that the other countries will want to see which way the wind blows.”
“You mean go with whoever wins the war?”
“Possibly.”
“All right — last caller. From Oklahoma.”
It was a woman’s voice, strangled by sobs. “My husband is one of those missing in the
There was a long pause.
“Take your time, ma’am.”
“He’s one of those missing…. He fought in Vietnam…. His sisters served. They were lost. He was decorated twice. I just want to know, is Washington doing anything to—” She couldn’t finish.
“Bruce.” King’s tone was more solemn now. “What do we tell this lady? Is there a possibility that Americans may have to fight again in Vietnam, only this time
“Yes — if that’s the way we have to go to stabilize the region as you suggested we should.”
“Wait a minute,
“Yes.”
“Ma’am — and I know this is an awfully hard question — but you’ve seen your two sisters-in-law… Were they in combat support roles or—”
“Yes, they were nurses.”
“Uh-huh. Now, you said they were killed?”
“One was, the other’s been listed as MIA.”
“Uh-huh. Ma’am, if we — if the United States had to send troops again into Vietnam — this time to fight with Vietnamese, both North and South, against Communist China — what would be your response after the pain and the suffering you’ve—”
“I… oh, I’m sorry…”
“No — take your time, ma’am.”
“I think a bully has to be stopped.”
“You mean China, right?’
“Yes.”
“You’re one brave lady. Thanks for calling.”
“Whew!” King said. “Some lady. Bruce, thanks for coming at such short notice.” King turned to his worldwide audience, which, among dozens of other capitals, included Beijing and Hanoi. “Don’t go away. Next — the Mongrels talk about their new album,
CHAPTER TWELVE
Jae Ghong, carrying a brown shopping basket, emerged from Shinjuku Station in west-central Tokyo. He walked a mile south, past the Meiji Shrine in Yoyogi Park, then caught a cab to go a mile east to the National Stadium, where he was part of the huge crowd watching Osaka’s Hanshin Tigers beating Tokyo’s Seibu Lions. After the game he caught the subway to the Ginza district, where he walked down past ritzy stores and viewed the Western-style mannequins with a mixture of envy and contempt. He wished that he could afford the clothing he saw — to buy something for his wife Mia back in Pyongyang. He could work for a year and still be unable to afford anything in the Ginza.
All the money he earned, less what it cost him to live in the far outskirts of Tokyo, went back as a remittance for his wife and two children. They all had to make sacrifices if North Korea was to become a great nation. Without many products to export to earn vital foreign exchange, the remittances of Chong and all other North Koreans living in Japan were vital to North Korea’s economy. But the Great Leaders — first Kim Il Sung and now Kim Jong Il — were correct: everyone had to make sacrifices if North Korea was to take its rightful position as Communist leader of Asia.
The new decadence of Japan was everywhere. The young Japanese particularly were a spoiled race. While their parents, the post-World War II generation, subscribed to
Of course, there were those who said the Japanese were too powerful a nation to falter, let alone fall, but Chong believed the great leader Kim Il Sung’s prediction that capitalism’s decadence, its immorality, would undermine its industrial achievements, and his, Chong’s, job was to help expedite this “historical process” by whatever he could do as a member of the North Korean expatriate organization, the Chongryun. What made it easier for Chong to believe in Kim Jong Il’s prediction was the way in which the Japanese treated the Koreans as second-rate citizens. The Koreans did all the low, menial, dirty jobs, but were not accepted into Japanese society. How to redress such a situation, how to deal with the humiliation that assailed you like the death of a thousand cuts, one slight at a time? The only way Chong knew was to strike back, and not on their terms but your own, to shatter their Japanese spirit, their sacred and exalted
Chong stood in front of a store window that sold expensive electronics, and gazed at the mirrorlike reflection to check those who were passing him and anyone who paused at the window. Two schoolgirls in uniform stopped to look at the range of portable compact disc and tape players and to watch one of Sony’s latest HDVs, high-definition video screens which, instead of having the normal U.S. standard of just over five hundred horizontal or scanner lines, had more than a thousand, and made for a dramatically sharper picture. Chong also watched the TV screen, for its camera was outside the store, taking pictures of passersby.
He knew what the American agent looked like: five-foot-six, 150 pounds, brown hair, blue eyes, smaller than the general run of American agents. The CIA presumably had started recruiting smaller men. In Asia they would blend much more quickly in a large crowd like that at the ball game. But Chong could see no Caucasian nearby, and if anyone was tracking him, he had not been aware of it in the taxi on his way from National Stadium, and a taxi would have been sure to flush the agent out — unless the American had radioed the taxi’s number ahead and a tail had been taken over by some Japanese agent from the JDF.
Chong, feeling fairly confident that he was not being followed, moved on down the Ginza back toward Hibiya Park, nearing the Chiyoda-Ku district and the Imperial Palace. He walked down by the moat, looked up at the eye- pleasing greenery that nestled the palace, and then made his way across to Tokyo Station. He could smell himself, having walked so far — about two miles in all — in an L-shaped route that he broke out of by going into Tokyo Station and catching the subway, now full of raucous revelers from the Lions and Tigers game, north a few miles to Ueno Station. Here he bought an iced tea, doing it without putting down his brown paper shopping bag, and made his way by foot another mile eastward to Asakusa Park, his destination the Buddhist Asakusa Kannon Temple.
He was looking forward to its serenity, though he did not believe in Buddhism, another religion of the weak. He made his way up to one of the incense stalls, bought two sticks, and placed them in the holders by the shrine. It was now 9:36 p.m., dark, and in twenty-four minutes, at ten o’clock or as near to it as he could get, depending on the line for a phone booth, he would ring one of his friends in the Chongryun. He walked around to the other entrance to the shrine and, head bowed, quickly scanned the entrance he’d just been in. He was sure no one had followed him. A small child jostled him to get a better look, banging into the bag. The woman began to bow in apology until she saw he was a Korean.
