The Orphan Master's Son_ A Novel - Adam Johnson [210]
IN THE MORNING, Commander Ga woke to the roaring engines of an American military cargo jet. The children were already awake, staring at the ceiling. They knew this wasn’t the once-a-week flight to Beijing or the twice-monthly grasshopper to Vladivostok. The children had never even heard an airplane over Pyongyang, which was restricted airspace. Not once since the American firebombing raids of 1951 had a plane been spotted over the nation’s capital.
He roused Sun Moon and together they listened to it head north, as if it had originated in Seoul, a direction from which nothing was allowed to come. He checked his watch—the Americans were three hours early. The Dear Leader would be furious.
“They’re flying low to announce their arrival,” he said. “Very American.”
Sun Moon turned to him. “So it’s time.”
He looked into her eyes to see what remained of their lovemaking last night, but she was looking forward and not back.
“It’s time,” he said.
“Children,” Sun Moon called, “we’re going on an adventure today. Go put together some food for us.” When they were gone, she pulled on her robe and lit a cigarette at the window, watching the American Goliath lower its landing gear over the Taedong and descend toward the airport. She turned to Ga. “There’s something you need to understand,” she said. “Where the Dear Leader is concerned, there’s only one of me. He has many girls, an entire kippumjo of them, but only I matter. He thinks that I reveal all to him, that emotions cross my face without my control, making me incapable of conspiring against him. I’m the only person in the world he thinks he can trust. ”
“Then today, he will feel the sting.”
“I’m not talking about him,” she said. “This is about you. Understand that if I slip from the Dear Leader’s grasp, someone is going to pay, and that price will be unimaginable. You can’t stay, you can’t be the one who pays.”
“I don’t know where you got these notions about me,” he said. “But—”
“You’re the one with the notions,” she went on. “I think you saw that movie and got it in your head that a noble man stays behind.”
“You’re tattooed on my heart,” he said. “You’ll always be with me.”
“I’m talking about you being with me.”
“We’ll make it work,” he said. “I promise. It will all work out. You’ve got to trust me.”
“It’s that kind of talk that scares me,” she said, and exhaled smoke. “This whole thing feels like some kind of loyalty test. One so sick not even my husband could’ve thought it up.”
How different it was to have warning that your life was about to change, Ga thought, let alone know the moment it would happen. Didn’t Sun Moon understand that? And they had a say in it. He had to smile at the notion that things might, for one morning, bend to their influence.
“That look on your face,” she said. “Even that makes me nervous.”
She came close to him, and he stood to be near her.
“You’re coming with me,” she said. “Understand? I can’t do it without you.”
“I’ll never leave your side.”
He tried to touch her, but she pulled away.
“Why won’t you just say you’re coming?”
“Why won’t you hear what I’m saying? Of course I am.”
She gave him a look of doubt. “My sister, my father, my sister, my mother. Even that cruel husband of mine. One by one, they were stripped from me. Don’t make it happen again. That’s not how it’s supposed to work, not when you have a choice. Just look me in the eyes and say it.”
He did it, he looked her in the eyes. “You said forever, and that’s me, forever. Soon, you’ll never be able to