Joy Brigade

3

We didn’t bother to buy tickets. In fact, I’m not even sure there was a booth. Hero Kang already had what he called yoheing zhang, travel permits, two of them. All through the station people gawked at me. But when I looked back, they quickly averted their eyes. Afraid, I suppose, that I might stop and talk to them. In a country that prizes loyalty to the Great Leader above all things, being spoken to by a foreigner could prove fatal.

The uniform fit well, except for the sleeves, which were about two inches too short. This morning, behind the warehouse, Hero Kang and I had washed up at the single faucet and he let me borrow his old-fashioned straight razor to shave. After scrubbing my armpits and rinsing my teeth, I felt human enough to face the world. Hero Kang told me to leave behind the old peacoat and wool trousers and leather boots I’d worn on the Star of Tirana. They weren’t the type of clothing an officer of the Warsaw Pact would be carrying around.

“Someone will burn them,” he told me.

I didn’t ask who. It was enough to know that Hero Kang wasn’t acting alone.

The two of us, both wearing our military uniforms, were about to board the train when a commotion broke out behind us. Nervously, I swiveled and looked back. An old woman, bearing a huge bundle in her arms and balancing another on her back, was arguing with a uniformed official. Apparently, she wanted to travel to Pyongyang, carrying dried mushrooms and garlic cloves to present to her family there as a gift. But the rail cop accused her of planning to sell the goods in the big city. She kept moving forward, arguing, trying to make her way onto the train. Finally, the uniformed officer shoved the old woman. She stumbled backward, tripping over her own bundle, and crashed to the ground. Her skull hit the blacktop with a crack.

I stopped on the metal steps of the train, staring at the scene, my fists clenched. In South Korea, no cop would ever do that to an elderly woman. The spirit of Confucius wouldn’t allow it. Hero Kang grabbed me roughly by the arm, and when I didn’t budge, he shoved. “Move,” he hissed, almost spitting in my ear. “Not here. Not now.”

The old woman’s bundles had busted open. She lay on her back on the ground, moaning. Passersby, instead of helping her to her feet, surreptitiously knelt and stuffed a few cloves of garlic or a few handfuls of mushrooms into their pockets. One of them mumbled “bobok juija.” Revanchist. In Seoul, I’d studied the Marxist terms that people learned during their two-hour daily indoctrinations sessions. Now I knew they actually used them. The guard who had shoved her stood with his hands clasped behind his back, staring off above the heads of the crowd, a posture of triumph stiffening his shoulders.

“I ought to punch him,” I said in Korean.

“No!” Hero Kang replied, shoving me again. “Move.”

We boarded the train, but I kept glancing out the window at the old woman lying supine on the ground. Hero Kang bulled me forward and reluctantly I marched toward the front car.

Hero Kang’s yoheing zhang were the best kind issued. It wasn’t called first class, that would be too bourgeois, but there was a sign saying that the front passenger car was a restricted area. Unlike the hard wooden benches in the other passenger cars, the seats here had plenty of legroom and were padded and covered with something that resembled leather. The windows were clean and the aisle swept clear of the debris found throughout the rest of the train. This car was for the dongji, Hero Kang told me. The comrades. The Communist cadre.

I would’ve thought these were exactly the people we’d want to avoid, but Hero Kang’s style was to confront them head-on and dare them to question us. It was Hero Kang’s size, his bulk, his aura of confidence that made people move out of his way. That and the photograph of the Great Leader hanging from his neck. I wanted to know more about how he’d attained his exalted position as Hero of the Nation, but last night he’d seemed reluctant to talk about it, so I dropped the subject.

Other cadres took their seats around us, a few of them nodding in recognition to Hero Kang. Bored, he nodded back. Some of them were military officers and I noticed their ranks, almost all colonels or above. A lot of brass in this car. The ones who took on the greatest air of superiority, though, even greater than the military men, were the ones wearing military-type clothing but no symbols of rank. Both men and women, they had bright red badges pinned to their chests. I figured these for the Communist Party cadres. They crossed their legs, lit up cigarettes, and chatted calmly. People of power and ease. In the West, they would’ve been wearing suits tailored in London and talking to one another about stockbrokers and offshore tax shelters. Here, they spoke of the Great Leader.

I felt like a rabbit on a live-fire range. Everyone in this restricted passenger car, with the single exception of Hero Kang, was my enemy. I sat staring grimly ahead, trying to control my breathing. As long as I held tightly to the wooden armrest, I figured my hands wouldn’t shake too much. So far, no one had approached us and I was praying that no one would.

My uniform was that of an officer of the Warsaw Pact in Eastern Europe with the rank insignia of a lieutenant colonel. Last night, Hero Kang informed me I would pose as a Romanian officer by the name of Enescu. The identity, including the papers, had already been established, but when I asked if we had backup at the Romanian Embassy, he interrupted me and warned me not to ask too many questions.

“We are a professional organization,” was all he’d say.

Apparently, they were very professional. If he could buffalo the boss of the Port of Nampo, establish safe houses amidst the city’s grain distribution network, send messages to Doc Yong, and set up contacts within a foreign embassy, the organization of resisters he belonged to was very professional indeed. But the more people participating, the sooner they’d be compromised.

When I pointed out to Hero Kang that I neither spoke nor understood Romanian, he said not to worry, no one we were likely to run into on the train did either. Military officers from other Communist countries are occasionally seen in Pyongyang, usually Russian or Chinese, but a Romanian shouldn’t raise too many eyebrows. As long as we kept moving. Like that rabbit on the firing range.

A whistle sounded and the train started its engines. Slowly, we chugged forward. Outside the window, ratty old wooden buildings rolled by, some made of brick but nothing that looked too permanent. I hadn’t expected there to be. During the war, Korean cities had been bombed mercilessly by the American Air Force, so much so that the pilots complained that all they were doing was making “rubble bounce on rubble.” Since then, the North Korean government had been in constant preparation for the resumption of war. The only structures that were designed to last were military fortifications.

I expected someone to walk down the aisle, as in South Korea, with trays full of drinks and cigarettes and snacks. But not here. The only people who marched through the train were a couple of rail-line policemen. When I turned to look back, I saw that they were checking the other passengers carefully, not only for their travel permits but also for their fare tokens. In our passenger car, the men did nothing more than nod at the various dignitaries and, without checking anyone’s permits or fare, scurried out of the car. No wonder Hero Kang had chosen to sit here.

Five minutes out of the station, we were in rolling countryside, heading north past fallow rice paddies toward the capital city of Pyongyang, the heart of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. I fought panic, taking deep breaths, reminding myself that Hero Kang would take care of me.

On some inaudible cue, people all around started to rise from their seats and make their way into the next car. Hero Kang rose and motioned for me to follow. I didn’t want to move. Impatiently, he gestured for me to get up, so I did, fighting a brief moment of vertigo. Then I pulled down my tunic, thrust back my shoulders, and followed Hero Kang.

It was a dining car.

All the cadres were taking seats at round tables, each of which could accommodate eight to ten. Hero Kang guided me to a stool in the corner. Just as we sat down, we were joined by a group of people wearing the same bland Communist uniforms everyone else was. Immediately, I went on alert. They weren’t speaking Korean. They wore high-collared jackets and the men’s hair was combed across their heads and cut in a severe straight line; the women had soft caps pulled over short hair. They were chattering to one another in the singsong dialect of Mandarin, the language of Beijing.

Hero Kang ignored them. Already, men in military uniforms were shoving trays filled with noodle soup in front of us. Each person grabbed for a bowl, offering it to the person next to him or her, until we all had steaming bowls in front of us. Then the same servers ladled white rice into smaller bowls and passed those around. Spoons and wooden chopsticks were distributed. Without further ado, all the comrades started shoveling soup and rice into their mouths. Two large bowls, each of turnip and cabbage kimchi, were placed on the table, the pieces cut in rough chunks. Hero Kang dipped his chopsticks into them with gusto. A couple of the Chinese women tried some morsels. I decided that, as a Romanian, I would steer clear of the kimchi. I even pretended to fumble with the chopsticks and then set them down and ate strictly with my spoon, which made shoveling clumps of noodles into my mouth awkward.

I’d been in Korean restaurants before, plenty of them, and usually in addition to the standard cabbage and turnip kimchi, various types of pickled vegetables, up to a dozen, are served on elegant plates. Also, rice is never served with noodles. But this was plain peasant fare, filling, in no way trying to be elegant. Nothing to drink was served, not even barley tea, and the staff had disappeared into another section of the dining car. If you were expecting a dessert menu, you could forget it.

None of the Chinese looked up while they ate. Neither did Hero Kang. I was grateful for the lack of attention. In South Korea, as the only Westerner, I would’ve been the center of attention. People would’ve been showing me how to use chopsticks and explaining the various dishes on the table-and, more importantly, practicing their English.

When he finished eating, one of the Chinese apparatchiks pulled out a pack of cigarettes with a drawing of Chairman Mao on the front. He offered it first to Hero Kang, who took two, and then to me. Without saying anything, I shook my head, pointing to my lungs. The Chinese nodded sympathetically and continued to pass out cigarettes to the men at the table, ignoring the women. All the other tables were lighting up now and soon the bare-walled dining car was filled with acrid smoke. The serving staff reappeared and cleared the tables, not bothering to ask whether we were finished or not.

Now was the time to leave. I was afraid someone would speak to me, but Hero Kang continued smoking, apparently unconcerned. One of the Chinese spoke to him in broken Korean.

“You are famous, comrade. How fortunate you are to have met personally with the Great Leader.”

Kang nodded dreamily, his eyelids half closed, allowing smoke to drift out of his nostrils.

There was no nameplate on the Chinese man’s tunic, only his pin of Chairman Mao. Nor did he wear a rank insignia. Therefore, he was political and possibly of very high rank indeed. He grinned and continued to speak to Hero Kang.

“And your friend, a comrade from Eastern Europe, I see.”

Kang nodded again. The Chinese man turned to me and said something in Russian.

Hero Kang sat up as if electrocuted. “He’s a Romanian, not a Russki.”

“Ah,” the Chinese man said. “But he’s an officer. Certainly he’s been educated in Russian.”

“The hell he has.” Hero Kang was raising his voice now. “He’s like me, promoted because of his ability to fight. In the Czech uprising he killed ten counterrevolutionaries, with his bare hands.”

Hero Kang reached out his big, bear-like paws as if to demonstrate. The Chinese man leaned back. I stared ahead sternly, showing as little reaction to what was going on around me as possible.

“Don’t provoke him,” Kang said, waggling his finger, “or he’ll think he’s back on the field of combat and then you’ll have to watch out.”

Kang barked a laugh, stubbed his cigarette out directly onto the wooden table, stood up and strode out of the dining car. I glanced at the wide-eyed Chinese without nodding, stood up, and followed Kang. Behind me, I heard them chattering. I wished I could understand.

We were the first to return to the passenger car. Hero Kang flopped down in his seat. He looked worried. I was too. I doubted that Kang’s little charade about me being a combat veteran who didn’t speak Russian fooled anyone. I felt certain we’d been exposed. In a low voice, I asked Hero Kang what we should do. He waved me off.

“When the time comes to fight,” he said, “we will fight.”

I glanced back at the dining car. No one had emerged yet, but they would soon. If I was going to do anything, now was the time.

Hurriedly, I stepped past Hero Kang until I reached the spot where the Chinese had been sitting. In the overhead rack, they had sequestered a few traveling bags. I reached in my pocket and pulled out one of the packs of British cigarettes I had purchased in Hong Kong, the half-empty one, and slid it into a side pocket of one of the bags, quickly rebuckling the clasp.

When I returned to my seat, I quietly told Hero Kang what I had done. He said nothing but nodded, pleased. He kept his eyes open for a few moments as other passengers filtered back into the car. Then he let his eyes droop and, after a few minutes, softly began to snore.

Most everyone slept throughout the rest of the slow trip to Pyongyang. Often we traveled at speeds of twenty miles per hour or less. I believed this was to preserve coal, but it might have been because of the poor condition of the tracks. The iron wheels screeched and occasionally lurched from side to side, making for some interesting moments along the banks of the Taedong River. Even at our reduced speed, the trip to Pyongyang should’ve taken only an hour, but we stopped at every country village, stretching the trip out to almost three hours.

Behind us in the regular passenger cars, during the loading and unloading, there was much argument and discussion centering around travel permits and fare tokens. If I hadn’t known that I was traveling in the “people’s paradise,” I would’ve guessed that the conductors and the rail guards lengthened the stops in order to eke out the maximum number of bribes from harried peasants, many of whom were traveling with bags of grain balanced atop their heads or clutching wicker baskets filled with dead fish or live fowl-presumably to barter with, which was strictly illegal. The old woman who had been knocked out back at the Nampo Station had been either unable or unwilling to pay a bribe.

At least the North Koreans were eating well, I thought. And so far, I hadn’t seen any beggars. No filthy men, or even children, sleeping on sidewalks and sitting listlessly near commuter stations, holding out hats or tin cups for loose change. Life was grim here in North Korea. But from the point of view of a people who had suffered through colonization, occupation, war, starvation, and disease in the last fifty years alone, maybe things weren’t so bad.

The train whistle shrilled and, with iron brakes grinding, we screeched into the Pyongyang Train Station. A large clock tower sat atop a sturdy stone building lined with plate-glass windows. Behind each one of them stood a uniformed guard, some of them peering at us through binoculars. When we came to a halt, the other passengers, particularly the small cadre of Chinese, were up and heading for the door. Hero Kang took his time, staying in character as a tough hombre who didn’t much care what anyone thought of him. I don’t think he was acting.

We followed the crowd to the departure gate. The uniformed woman checking documents there merely bowed to Hero Kang and waved the two of us through. It was in the foyer of the huge domed building that I spotted them. I pulled on Hero Kang’s sleeve.

The Chinese man we’d spoken to in the dining car was conversing urgently with two men with red security armbands. They were having trouble communicating; the Chinese man had an exasperated expression on his face and kept gesticulating wildly, receiving blank looks from the security guards.

Hero Kang sized up the situation quickly.

“Come on,” he said.

We headed for a side exit. About halfway down the hallway, a sign said: PEOPLE’S SECURITY, PYONGYANG TRAIN STATION. Hero Kang stepped inside. A smartly dressed young man stood up from behind a counter, tugged on his tunic, and half bowed to Hero Kang.

“I have a case of smuggling to report,” Kang said. A supervisor was brought out and Hero Kang quickly explained the situation. Within seconds, a detail of security guards was dispatched to detain the Chinese apparatchiks who were so brazenly smuggling counterrevolutionary tobacco into the Democratic People’s Republic.

In the main lobby of the train station, the Chinese man must have finally made his point, because a policeman’s whistle blew. But the whistle sputtered out as a larger contingent of security guards surrounded the Chinese and placed them under arrest.

Hero Kang and I exited the train station from a side door.

There are no taxi stands in front of the Pyongyang Train Station, mainly because there are no taxis in North Korea. Automobiles, all automobiles, are gifts from the Great Leader, given selectively to those who contribute most to the revolution. Which means mainly Communist Party bosses and the military. Even the police are usually left on foot. And the fire department can forget about it; there are just not enough internal combustion engines to go around.

Hero Kang and I caught a ride on the back of a garlic truck. The driver was a farmer from a cooperative outside of town, and the young man with him was his nephew. They were in awe of Hero Kang and repeatedly thanked him for saving their country from the American imperialist aggressors in the Great Patriotic War. They seemed afraid of me and mostly tried to pretend I wasn’t there. The old truck was Russian-made and coughed and wheezed through the wide Pyongyang streets. There weren’t the teeming masses I was used to in Seoul, only small groups of uniformed students or organized workers marching to and fro, sometimes belting out songs in praise of the Great Leader.

My briefers in Seoul had told me that only the most loyal Communist subjects were allowed to live in Pyongyang, handpicked for their socialist credentials. The buildings were mostly huge apartment-like complexes made of cement. What was odd was the lack of signs or advertisements of any kind, and there were no stores where one could purchase food or cigarettes or soju. If you couldn’t buy what you wanted when you wanted it, that meant you were dependent on the generosity of the Great Leader. Which, I suppose, was the plan. After meandering through the city for a couple of miles, we hopped off in an area of town that sat beyond the central monuments and parade grounds, beyond the rows of shoebox-like cement apartment buildings. It was an area of town that looked almost as if it were fit for human habitation.

“The bosses don’t let foreigners come down here,” Kang told me. We stepped down muddy alleys surrounded by wood- and brick-walled buildings, nothing much more than two stories and all of it jumbled in a maze that led up the side of the hill. From there, the neighborhood spread off to the left toward the Taedong River. A few women with bundles of laundry balanced atop their heads passed us. One of them stared at me goggle-eyed. The others averted their gaze, cringing as they did so, as if I were some predator escaped from a zoo.

“The children are at school,” Kang said, “their mothers and fathers at work. Only the grandmothers remain.”

“Won’t those women report me to the police?”

“No. You’re wearing a uniform, for one thing, and even if you weren’t, they dare not talk to the police. They or their family might be accused of sedition.”

“Sedition? For what?”

Kang shrugged. “Just talking to a foreigner is a form of disloyalty.”

“How about you?”

Kang laughed and flicked the photograph of himself shaking hands with the Great Leader. “I’m a hero of the people.”

Like the rest of the city, this jumble of buildings lacked storefronts. Even the poorest neighborhood in South Korea would have a few shops selling dried cuttlefish or puffed rice or ginseng gum, but there was nothing like that here. Not even any noodle stands or chop houses.

Another thing I didn’t see were cops. Hero Kang seemed to read my mind.

“The police mainly patrol the government offices and the homes of the cadres.”

“But if we see one?”

Kang’s face set grimly. “I’ll take care of it. Come on.”

We slid into a narrow alley lined with brick-and-stone walls. The pathway ran straight for a while and then began to wind sinuously in various directions until I was completely disoriented. I would’ve navigated by the sun, but it was hidden behind banks of gray clouds. Finally, the walkway started to rise uphill. I felt hidden back here, and safe.

“Commander Koh,” I said, “in the Port of Nampo, he will alert the authorities about me. And the Chinese aboard the train, eventually the train station security office will corroborate their story and confirm that a Romanian officer who couldn’t speak Russian is wandering around Pyongyang.”

Kang shook his head. “No. Neither one of them will report it. Neither Commander Koh nor the security people at the train station.”

The road became steeper and finally, leaning forward, Hero Kang explained.

“Things are different here. No one dares to report failure.” I thought of the headquarters of the Eighth United States Army in Seoul. There wasn’t much failure reported there either. Kang continued, “The price of failure is too high. Commander Koh would never report that he allowed a foreign sailor to escape from the Port of Nampo, nor would the security office at the Pyongyang Train Station report that a man posing as a Romanian officer slipped through their grasp. They will remain silent and hope that your escape is not traced back to them.”

“And if it is traced back to them?”

“They will cut a deal with someone to keep it quiet.”

“They will be blackmailed,” I said.

Hero Kang nodded. “Precisely. But that is unlikely.”

“Why?”

“Because they will take other action.”

“Other action? You just said they won’t report me.”

“No, they won’t. Not officially. But they have other options.”

“Other options? Like what?”

“Like reporting you to one of the fixers.”

“Fixers” wasn’t the exact word Hero Kang used. In fact, it wasn’t a single word at all but a North Korean term he took pains to explain to me. It has to do with people who find ways to solve problems so they are never brought to the attention of the official governmental authorities. They also act as intermediaries between the various factions within the government. According to Kang, the fixers are exceedingly efficient-unlike the government-and are highly paid for the work they do.

“So Commander Koh and the railroad security people will go to someone they call a fixer?”

“Yes. A foreigner wandering around North Korea is like a bomb rolling across the deck of a ship. They have to do something.”

“Do you think they have already hired a fixer?”

“Almost certainly.”

Hero Kang made a left turn into a short alley draped with tattered canvas. At the end of a short walkway was a wooden storage bin heaped with stinking refuse. The stench was so awful I squeezed my nose.

“Back here,” he said, pointing into the darkness.

“There’s nothing back there. Just a wall.”

“Come.”

Hero Kang crouched on the far edge of the refuse bin, fiddled with some of the splintered wood, and a small portal opened. The aperture was pitch black, darker than its surroundings. He entered and waved for me to follow.

I gazed behind me down the alley, at the gray light, at a sparrow that flitted across my vision through the cold, fresh air. Then I looked back at the foul opening. I had no choice but to follow this man. I was lost in a country that despised Americans, like a fat carp swimming among sharks. I went through the opening into the muddy pit.

After a few yards, I was able to stand almost upright. An electric torch appeared in Hero Kang’s hand and he used it to guide his way over the jagged floor of the tunnel. Stones jutted down from the roof above me. I dodged most of them but clunked my head a couple of times, cursing as I did so.

The tunnels were used, Hero Kang told me, during the Korean War to hide from American bombs.

“We were most afraid of the napalm,” Hero Kang said. “You Americans splashed it everywhere, turning us into cowering moles. The Great Leader had his headquarters in a cave not far from here. That’s why the network is so huge. In addition to the army, the average citizens, with their bare hands, tunneled into the mountains too. For safety. After the war, the army used explosives and closed most of the tunnels, but the people have reclaimed them, pulling out dirt and lumber and boulders to develop a little world back here where we can live free of constant surveillance.”

Ahead of us, men grunted in cadence. And then I heard some familiar words: “Kyongnei. Chunbi. Shijak.” Bow. Prepare. Begin.

A door opened into a vast chamber lit by glass lanterns. In the center of the chamber, a raised wooden platform, a dochang, had been constructed. At least two-dozen men stood facing an instructor, some wearing white karate robes, most not.

“A Taekwondo class,” I said to Hero Kang.

“Yes.”

Taekwondo is taught to everyone in school and in the military, for the defense of the country. In its advanced forms, however, it is taught only to those favored by the Great Leader.

“So these men practice here in secret,” I said.

“Yes.”

We watched the men go through their choreographed moves. I’d studied Taekwondo in Seoul, on the base. A lot of GIs did. So far, I’d advanced to the first level of black belt, but I was a rank amateur compared to these men. Their kicks, hops, punches, and parries were carried out with a blinding precision and speed.

“So why have you brought me here?” I asked.

Hero Kang grinned. “You need to practice. Take off your clothes.” He pointed to a bench covered with jackets and hats and shoes. Then he walked over to a line of pegs in the stone wall and selected a white uniform. He tossed it to me. “Put this on.”

“Why?” I asked. “Is this about that ‘tournament’ you mentioned?”

Hero Kang grinned even more broadly. “We’re going to find out what kind of fighter you are.”

I lay collapsed on a cold wooden floor. The pummeling I’d taken from the Taekwondo experts had been brutal. I was bigger than any of them, my legs and arms longer, my body heavier. Still, they’d kicked me around as if I were an overstuffed beanbag. When I was a kid, I’d studied boxing in a sheriff’s program at the Main Street Gym in Los Angeles and I considered myself to be pretty good. More than once, my left jab had pulled me out of a jam. But Taekwondo emphasizes the use of the feet and the legs and more contact is allowed with kicks. Punches, by contrast, have to be pulled. So much for my advantage. I rolled over and groaned, longing to take a shower. Hero Kang assured me that in this worker’s paradise there was no hot water available.

“Tonight,” he said, “food will be brought to you. Until then, you are to wait and make no sound whatsoever.”

After the workout, he’d had me change back into the Romanian officer’s uniform. I’d been perspiring so much from the workout that the once-clean Warsaw Pact uniform was soon soaked through with sweat and the coarse wool rubbed mercilessly against my skin. We’d slipped out of a different exit from the underground tunnels and made our way about a half-mile, with me hobbling as fast as I could behind Hero Kang. Finally, we stepped into a deserted building constructed like a yoguan, a traditional Korean inn. There was a double door out front, a small wood-floored foyer, and a central stairway that led upstairs to long halls with cubicle-like rooms behind small doors. The only problem was that there was no proprietor. As usual, Hero Kang strode in like he owned the place and bade me follow him upstairs to the last room in a long hallway, where, once inside, I collapsed on the floor. In the next five minutes or so, I heard a few distant footsteps in the building and the occasional bump of wood on wood.

Hero Kang turned to leave. “I will lock the door from the outside.”

I sat up, feeling the bruises along my thighs and forearms. “Lock it from the outside? When will you be back?”

Hero Kang shushed me. “Tomorrow. Early. But like I said, someone will bring you food.”

“What if I have to go to the bathroom?”

He pointed at an iron pee pot in the corner.

I nodded, realizing angrily that my options for self-controlled action were rapidly diminishing.

“Don’t worry,” he said, reading my thoughts. “There are many out there looking for you, but right here in the middle of the city, you are well hidden. And there are many of us too, to protect you.”

“Why is it so important to bring me here? I told you before, I must see Doctor Yong In-ja first. Before I do anything.”

Hero Kang backed out of the door. A metal hasp squeaked closed and a padlock clicked. I groaned and lay back down on the floor. It was cold in there. Almost freezing. The perspiration turned clammy on my skin. I rolled over and groaned again, hungry, miserable, frightened. There was a world of hostility out there, and I hadn’t a friend in the world except for Hero Kang. And who knew when he’d come back?

These thoughts caused my stomach to churn, and so, with an effort of will, I thrust them out of my mind. Eventually I dozed, for how long I’m not sure. Finally, after what must’ve been two or three hours, a metallic clang brought me fully awake. I sat up. The room was dark now, illuminated only by moonlight seeping through a transom-like window.

I listened carefully. At first nothing, and then the sound of someone rummaging around near the front of the room. I crouched and searched for something to use as a weapon. Nothing available but my fists.

Another metallic clang as a small hinge creaked open and then what sounded like something being dropped into a chute. I recognized the sounds. I’d heard them often in South Korea: someone replenishing the cylindrical charcoal briquettes in the underground heating system. I placed my hand flat on the floor. No heat yet. Then more clanging as tongs and a metal pan were being put away. Footsteps approached the front door.

Someone fiddled with the lock, the rusty hasp was pulled back, and the door swung open. Whoever it was held a candle low in front of his or her body, head bowed and hooded. I couldn’t see a face. Then I saw a long woolen skirt rustle forward, and the candle being placed on the floor. The woman, whoever she was, had a huge wooden disc strapped to her back like a shield, and tied to that were three layers of tightly folded material. In her left hand she held a large brass pot stuffed with a brown paper bag, and in her right a canvas bag smeared with soot. She let both drop to the floor.

“Who are you?” I asked.

The woman ignored me as she closed the door and slid shut the inner bolt. Then she placed the candle atop the wooden box meant to hold shoes. She shrugged off the shield and the material strapped to it, and a canvas bag, hidden between the layers, plopped out on the floor. Finally, she turned and knelt in front of me. I waited, afraid of what I thought I was seeing, terrified to allow myself to believe what my mind was telling me-not until I was sure. She slid back her hood.

There are moments in our lives that, because of pain or joy or terror, are unforgettable. This, to me, was one of those moments. I felt as if a surge passed through my body. Until that moment, I had suppressed my feelings of longing, of loss, and of loneliness. As I beheld the face I thought I’d never see again, I realized how much I’d missed her.

Doctor Yong In-ja stared at me somberly, not smiling. Hers was a smooth face, even-featured, with short bobbed hair and thick-rimmed glasses. No one, at least in the West, would accuse her of being beautiful. But I thought she was. In fact, at that moment, I wanted to embrace her, but I knew better. Being Korean-and a most reserved Korean at that-she kept her distance for this formal moment. Then she did an odd thing-she lowered her forehead to the ground, held it there, and said, “Choesong hamnida.” I am terribly sorry.

As far as I was concerned, Doctor Yong In-ja had nothing to be sorry about. I told her that.

“You are wrong,” she replied. “I have much to be sorry about. Due to my own selfishness, I have brought you into terrible danger.”

She was speaking English now. One of the things that always fascinated me about her was that even though English was her second language, she spoke it better than most GIs did. Including me.

“No. You have nothing to be sorry about,” I told her. “I wanted to come here. I would’ve had it no other way.”

She stared at me quizzically. “Why?”

“Because of you,” I said.

She turned away. “You will change your mind when I tell you all that I came here to say.”

“No,” I replied. “I won’t change my mind.”

Then she turned back and stared deeply into my eyes, evaluating what she saw, turning it over in that finely tuned mind of hers. Finally, she did what I hoped she’d do. She made a decision. The right decision. She held my eyes steadily and then smiled. The most beautiful and the most radiant smile I’d seen in my life.

“You’re filthy,” she said.

“Yes.”

She gestured toward the charcoal briquettes in the dirty bag and the brass pot. “I’ll heat water for your bath.”

“And then?” I asked.

“You’ll eat. Rice. Bean curd soup.”

She unfolded four short legs on the wooden shield and set it on the floor.

“And after that?” I asked.

“You’ll sleep.” She allowed the folded sleeping mat and comforter to flop loosely onto the floor.

“Alone?”

“We’ll see,” she replied.

Doc Yong shook me awake. In the pale moonlight, she placed a forefinger against her pursed lips, warning me to be quiet. I sat up. Outside, boots pounded on pavement. I rose to my feet and crossed to the transom, trying vainly to reach the top latch. Doc Yong knelt on all fours and motioned to her back. I understood. She wanted me to use her as a stepladder to reach the latch. I was too heavy, I knew, but she pointed again to her back, insisting furiously. Gingerly, I stepped on her back with one foot, pulling myself up on the transom’s ledge, supporting most of my own weight, and reached the latch. I slipped it back, pulled open the transom and, for just a second, peeked out.

There, standing on the sidewalk, in the glow of the headlights of a military vehicle, stood a female military officer. She was tall and wore high leather boots and a dark-blue overcoat tied tightly around a slender waist. Black hair hung long and loose, glimmering from beneath a leather-brimmed cap. She barked orders. Armed men trotted down the sidewalk at her command. They were moving fast, apparently searching the area.

I lowered myself quickly, breathless now, not at the exertion but at the shock of seeing so many armed men across the street. But I was also stunned by something else. I was ashamed of myself for thinking of it, at this moment of emergency, but I was thinking of it nevertheless. I found myself focusing on the face of the female military officer: a long oval with smooth, white skin and puffed lips and angry eyes. She was very possibly the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.

Doc Yong stared at me, knowing something had changed. She hopped to her feet and, still motioning furiously, indicated that I was to lift her up to the level of the transom. I flexed my knees, grabbed her securely around the waist, and hoisted her easily into the air, holding her there while she clutched the edge of the transom. More boots pounded on pavement. An engine purred and began to fade. Finally, just as the muscles in my arms started to burn, she motioned for me to lower her to the floor. Then she pointed for me to close the transom. I did. Quietly.

She knelt in the center of the floor and relit the single candle.

We squatted opposite one another.

“She’s very beautiful,” she said.

“Who?”

“Don’t play dumb with me. You saw her.”

“The officer, you mean?”

“Yes. A daewui.”

“A senior captain,” I said. Before leaving Seoul, I’d memorized the ranks of all the branches of the North Korean military.

“Yes. They are searching the area, moving fast. This is a densely populated neighborhood and they don’t have enough men to knock on every door and search every room. That means she’s working alone, not in an official capacity.”

“She’s a fixer,” I said.

“Who told you about them?”

“Hero Kang.”

She nodded at that.

“What do you suppose they’re looking for?” I asked.

“A Romanian officer,” she replied, “who can’t speak Russian.”

“Or an Albanian sailor who escaped from the Port of Nampo.”

“By now,” she said, “they know you were traveling on a Peruvian passport.”

“And you know too.”

“Yes. I know too.”

“We can’t just sit here,” I said. “They’ll find us.”

Doc Yong shook her head vigorously. “A full door-to-door search will attract too much attention. I don’t believe they’ll do that. Attention is what they’re trying to avoid, to make sure that the superiors of the authorities at both the Port of Nampo and the Pyongyang Train Station are not alerted to their miserable failure.”

“You mean their miserable failure in allowing me to enter the country.”

“Yes. What they’ll do is sit tight and hope that you’ll become frightened and poke your head out. Instead, we must wait for Hero Kang. He’ll know how to get us out of here.”

“You could leave,” I said. “They’re not looking for you.”

Doc Yong shook her head again. “Not yet.”

She grabbed the canvas pack that had been strapped to her back, untied it, and pulled out a large bag. It was rectangular, wrapped in water-resistant oil paper. Beneath the paper were the tattered remnants of a leather binding, reinforced with varnished bamboo slats. A book, not bound at the spine but rather shot through with half a dozen brass rivets that held the thick sheaf of yellowed paper intact. What scholars call a codex. The paper I recognized-it was the same thick vellum as the scrap that had been given to me by an Eastern European sailor in the Port of Pusan. Doc Yong thumbed through the pages.

“Here,” she said. “Here is the section I cut out. We must replace it.”

“We will,” I said. “It’s in Seoul, in a safe place.”

Actually, the fragment had been stolen from me by a homicide investigator of the Korean National Police known as Mr. Kill. As part of the deal for me to come up here, I demanded that he return the fragment. He did. Now it was locked in the CID safe at Eighth Army headquarters.

Gently, I touched the rough leather of the codex. “Tell me about it,” I said.

Outside, we heard the abrupt shouts of soldiers. We froze for a second, listening as their footsteps passed.

Doc Yong turned back to the manuscript. For years, she explained, scholars thought that the codex was nothing but a myth.

“Supposedly,” Doc Yong said, “in the early fifteenth century, during the rule of our Great King Sejong, a strange man was spotted in the mountainous precincts of Hamgyong Province. A ‘wild man,’ he was called, and some said he was not a man at all but a beast. A court official was appointed to track him, an inspector of the king’s, a man who held the rank of Five White Horses.”

“A cop,” I said.

“More like what the Europeans call an ombudsman.”

“A what?”

“Somebody appointed by the government to investigate anything unusual. Or anything that seems to have gone awry.”

“Okay,” I replied. “So this inspector of the Five White Horses starts chasing this wild man through the mountains. What happened?”

“He was accompanied by a scribe who wrote it all down. His name was Clerk Yi.” Doc Yong placed her hand on the codex. “That’s why we have this manuscript. It’s difficult for me to read not only because the writing is archaic but also because Clerk Yi had a very fluid style of penmanship, a style the Chinese call ‘grass writing.’ ”

In ancient times Koreans had no written language of their own. Educated people learned to read and write Chinese. If they were well off enough, they traveled to China to continue their studies. Indeed, some of the most revered poets in Chinese literature were Koreans.

“I’ve managed to translate about half of Clerk Yi’s manuscript so far,” Doc Yong said.

“Into English?”

“Both modern Korean and English,” she replied.

I shook my head, never failing to marvel at her brilliance. “So did they catch the beast?”

“I haven’t gotten there yet.”

“What was it? A man or an animal?”

“I’m not sure,” Doc Yong replied. “But I did get to the part about the tunnels, where the beast was being chased by the inspector and his minions and eluded them by entering ancient caverns.”

“The ones that tunnel beneath the DMZ.”

“Yes.”

“You got their attention at Eighth Army,” I said.

“I thought I would. And that’s why you’re here.”

“No. That’s not why I’m here.”

She waited, holding her breath.

“I’m here for you,” I said.

It was at that moment, while she gazed into my eyes, that someone kicked the door in.