The Orphan Master's Son_ A Novel - Adam Johnson [8]
They took the bottle to the window. Far in the distance, dogs were barking in their warrens. On the horizon, above the SAM bunkers, there was a glow in the sky, moonlight reflecting off the ocean. Behind them, Gil began gassing in his sleep.
Officer So drank. “I don’t think old Gil’s used to a diet of millet cakes and sorghum soup.”
“Who the hell is he?” Jun Do asked.
“Forget about him,” Officer So said. “I don’t know why Pyongyang started this business up again after all these years, but hopefully we’ll be rid of him in a week. One mission, and if everything goes right, we’ll never see that guy again.”
Jun Do took a drink—his stomach clutching at the fruit, the alcohol.
“What’s the mission?” he asked.
“First, another practice run,” Officer So said. “Then we’re going after a special someone. The Tokyo Opera spends its summers in Niigata. There’s a soprano. Her name is Rumina.”
The next drink of shoju went down smooth. “Opera?” Jun Do asked.
Officer So shrugged. “Some bigshot in Pyongyang probably heard a bootleg and had to have her.”
“Gil said he survived a land-mine tour,” Jun Do said. “For that, they sent him to language school. Is it true—does it work like that, do you get rewarded?”
“We’re stuck with Gil, okay? But you don’t listen to him. You listen to me.”
Jun Do was quiet.
“Why, you got your heart set on something?” Officer So asked. “You even know what you’d want as a reward?”
Jun Do shook his head.
“Then don’t worry about it.”
Officer So walked to the corner and leaned over the latrine bucket. He braced himself against the wall and strained for a long time. Nothing happened.
“I pulled off a miracle or two in my day,” he said. “I got rewarded. Now look at me.” He shook his head. “The reward you want is this: don’t become me.”
Jun Do stared out the window at the hot box. “What’s going to happen to him?”
“The dog man?” Officer So asked. “There are probably a couple of Pubyok on the train from Pyongyang right now to get him.”
“Yeah, but what’s going to happen to him?”
Officer So tried one last push to get some urine out.
“Don’t ask stupid questions,” he said through his teeth.
Jun Do thought of his mother on a train to Pyongyang. “For your reward, could you ask for a person?”
“What, a woman?” Officer So shook his umkyoung in frustration. “Yeah, you could ask for that.” He came back and drank the rest of the bottle, saving only a swish in the bottom. This he poured, a dribble at a time, over the dying soldier’s lips. Officer So clapped him good-bye on the chest, then he stuffed the empty bottle in the crook of the boy’s sweat-soaked arm.
They commandeered a new fishing boat, made another crossing. Over the Tsushima Basin, they could hear the powerful clicks, like punches to the chest, of sperm whales hunting below, and nearing the island of Dogo, granite spires rose sudden from the sea, white up top from bird guano and orange below from great gatherings of starfish. Jun Do stared up toward the island’s north promontory, volcanic black, limned in dwarf spruce. This was a world wrought for its own sake, without message or point, a landscape that would make no testimony for one great leader over another.
There was a famous resort on this island, and Officer So thought they could catch a tourist alone on the beach. But when they reached the lee of the island, there was an empty boat on the water, a black Avon inflatable, six-man, with a fifty-horse Honda outboard. They took the skiff over to investigate. The Avon was abandoned, not a soul upon the waters. They climbed aboard, and Officer So started the Honda engine. He shut it down. He pulled the gas can out of the skiff, and together they rolled it in the water—it filled quickly, going down ass-first with the weight of the Vpresna.
“Now we’re a proper team,” Officer So said as they admired their new boat.
That’s when the diver surfaced.
Lifting his mask, the diver showed a look of uncertain wonder to discover three men in his boat. But he handed up a sack of abalone