The Orphan Master's Son_ A Novel - Adam Johnson [222]
The Dear Leader recoiled, tossing the pictures aside.
He stepped outside, where you could hear the jet’s engines ramping, its hydraulic cargo bay closing. The Dear Leader looked once around the building. Inexplicably, he glanced upward to the clouds.
“But her clothes are here,” he said. “Her red dress is right here.”
Comrade Buc arrived and dismounted his forklift. “I heard gunfire,” he said.
“Sun Moon’s missing,” Ga informed him.
“But that’s impossible,” Buc said. “Where could she be?”
The Dear Leader turned to Ga. “She didn’t say anything, did she, about going someplace?”
“She said nothing, nothing at all,” Ga said.
Commander Park joined them. He was limping. “That dog,” he said and took a big breath. He’d lost a lot of blood.
The Dear Leader said, “Sun Moon’s missing.”
Park leaned over, breathing heavily. He placed his good hand on his good knee. “Detain all the citizens,” he told his men. “Confirm their IDs. Canvass the grounds, sweep all the abandoned aircraft, and get someone dredging that shit pond.”
The American jet began to accelerate down the runway, the noise of its engines making it impossible to be heard. For a minute, they stood there, waiting until they could speak. By the time the plane had lifted and begun to bank, Park had figured things out.
“Let me go get you a bandage,” Buc said to Commander Park.
“No,” Park said, looking at the ground. “No one’s going anywhere.” To the Dear Leader, he said, “We must assume that Commander Ga had a hand in this.”
“Commander Ga?” the Dear Leader asked. He pointed. “Him?”
“He was friends with the Americans,” Park said. “Now the Americans are gone. And Sun Moon is gone.”
The Dear Leader looked up in an effort to locate the American plane, his eyes slowly panning the sky for it. Then he turned to Ga. On the Dear Leader’s face was a look of disbelief. His eyes roamed over all the options, all the impossible things that might have happened to Sun Moon. For a moment, the Dear Leader’s gaze went completely blank, and Ga knew the expression well. This was the face that Ga had shown the world, that of a boy who had swallowed the things that had happened to him, but who wouldn’t understand what they meant for a long, long time.
“Is this true?” the Dear Leader asked. “Out with the truth.”
They were in the quiet now, where the sound of the plane used to be.
“Now you know something about me,” Ga told the Dear Leader. “I’ve given you a piece of me, and now you know who I really am. And I know something of you.”
“What are you talking about?” the Dear Leader asked. “Tell me where Sun Moon is.”
“I’ve taken the ultimate from you,” Ga told him. “I’ve pulled the thread that will unravel you.”
Commander Park stood upright, looking only partly renewed. He lifted his bloody box cutter.
With a finger, the Dear Leader halted him.
“You must speak the truth to me, son,” the Dear Leader told Ga in a voice that was slow and stern. “Did you do something with her?”
“I’ve given you the scar that’s on my heart,” Ga told him. “I will never see Sun Moon again. And neither will you. From now on, we’ll be like brothers that way.”
Commander Park gave a signal, and two of his men took hold of Ga, their thumbs sinking deep into his biceps.
“My boys in Division 42 will get this straightened out,” Park told the Dear Leader. “Can I give him to the Pubyok?”
But the Dear Leader didn’t answer. He turned to look again at the changing station, at the simple little temple with the dresses inside.
Commander Park took charge. “Take Ga to the Pubyok,” he told his men. “And you might as well grab the other drivers, too.”
“Wait,” Ga said. “Buc didn’t have anything to do with this.”
“That’s