The Orphan Master's Son_ A Novel - Adam Johnson [17]
If Jun Do wanted to defect, he could have done it a dozen times. At the end of a tunnel, it was as easy as climbing the ladder and triggering a spring-loaded door.
“In this whole stupid country,” Jun Do said, “the only thing that made sense to me were the Korean ladies on their knees cleaning the feet of the Japanese.”
“I could take you to the South Korean embassy tomorrow. It’s just a train ride. In six weeks you’d be in Seoul. You’d be very useful to them, a real prize.”
“Your mother, your father,” Jun Do said. “They’ll get sent to the camps.”
“Whether you’re a good karaoke singer or bad, eventually your number comes up. It’s only a matter of time.”
“What about Officer So—will some fancy whiskey make you forget him digging in the dark of Prison 9?”
“He’s the reason to leave,” Gil said. “So you don’t become him.”
“Well, he sends his regards,” Jun Do said and dropped the loop of nylon over Gil’s head, pulling the slack so the strap was snug around his neck.
Gil downed his whiskey. “I’m just a person,” he said. “I’m just a nobody who wants out.”
The bartender saw the leash. Covering her mouth, she said, “Homo janai.”
“I guess I don’t need to translate that,” Gil said.
Jun Do gave the leash a tug and they both stood.
Gil closed his watercolor tin, then bowed to the bartender. “Chousenjin ni turesarareru yo,” he said to her. With her phone, she took a picture of the two of them, then poured herself a drink. She lifted it in Gil’s honor before drinking.
“Fucking Japanese,” Gil said. “You’ve got to love them. I said I was being kidnapped to North Korea, and look at her.”
“Take a good, long look,” Jun Do said and lifted the motorcycle key from the bar.
Past the shore break, they motored into swells sharpened by the wind—the black inflatable lifted, then dropped flat in the troughs. Everyone held the lifeline to steady themselves. Rumina sat in the nose, fresh tape around her hands. Officer So had draped his jacket around her—except for that, her body was bare and blue with cold.
Jun Do and Gil sat on opposite sides of the raft, but Gil wouldn’t look at him. When they reached open water, Officer So backed off the engine enough that Jun Do could be heard.
“I gave Gil my word,” he told Officer So. “I said we’d forget how he tried to run.”
Rumina sat with the wind at her back, hair turbulent in her face. “Put him in the bag,” she said.
Officer So had a grand laugh at that. “The opera lady’s right,” he said. “You caught a defector, my boy. He had a fucking gun to our heads. But he couldn’t outsmart us. Start thinking of your reward,” he said. “Start savoring it.”
The idea of a reward, of finding his mother and delivering her from her fate in Pyongyang, now made him sick. In the tunnels, they would sometimes wander into a curtain of gas. You couldn’t detect it—a headache would spike, and you’d see the darkness throb red. He felt that now with Rumina glaring at him. He suddenly wondered if she didn’t mean him, that Jun Do should go in the bag. But he wasn’t the one who beat her or folded her up. It wasn’t his father who’d ordered her kidnapping. And what choice did he have, about anything? He couldn’t help that he was from a town lacking in electricity and heat and fuel, where the factories were frozen in rust, where able-bodied men were either in labor camps or were listless with hunger. It wasn’t his fault that all the boys in his care were numb with abandonment and hopeless at the prospect of being recruited as prison guards or conscripted into suicide squads.
The lead was still around Gil’s neck. Out of pure joy, Officer So leaned over and yanked it hard, just to feel it cinch. “I’d roll you over the side,” he said. “But I’d miss what they’re going to do to you.”
Gil winced from the pain. “Jun Do knows how to do it now,” he said. “He’ll replace you, and they’ll send you to a camp so you never talk about this business.”
“You don’t know anything,” Officer So said. “You’re soft and weak. I fucking invented this game. I kidnapped Kim Jong Il’s personal sushi chef. I plucked the Dear Leader’s