The Orphan Master's Son_ A Novel - Adam Johnson [83]
“For something like that, you’d give us what we wanted?”
“The boats? Sure we could lay off them, but why? Every damn one of them is freighted with mayhem and compassed toward trouble. But the Dear Leader’s toy?” A whistle came from the Senator’s teeth. “That’s a different prospect. To hand that thing back, we might as well take a piss on the Prime Minister of Japan’s peach tree.”
“But you admit,” Jun Do said, “that it belongs to the Dear Leader, that you’re holding his property?”
“The talks are over,” the Senator said. “They happened yesterday, and they went nowhere.”
The Senator then took his foot off the gas pedal.
“There is, however, one more issue, Commander,” the Senator said as they drifted to the side of the road. “And it has nothing to do with the negotiations or whatever games y’all are playing.”
The Mustang pulled beside them. From its passenger seat, her hand hanging out the window, Wanda spoke to the Senator. “You boys all right?” she asked.
“Just getting a few things straight,” the Senator said. “Don’t wait for us—we’ll be right along.”
Wanda slapped her hand on the side of the Mustang, and Tommy drove on. Jun Do caught a glimpse of Dr. Song in the backseat, but he couldn’t tell if the old man’s eyes were crinkled in fear or narrowed by betrayal.
“Here’s the thing,” the Senator said, and his eyes were locked into Jun Do’s. “Wanda says you’ve done some deeds, that there’s blood on your file. I invited you into my house. You slept in my bed, walked amongst my people, a killer. They tell me life isn’t worth much where you’re from, but all these people you met here, they mean an awful lot to me. I’ve dealt with killers before. In fact, I’ll only deal with you next time. But such dealings don’t take place unawares, such people don’t sit down to dinner with your wife, unbeknownst. So, Commander Ga, you can give a message direct to the Dear Leader, and this is on my letterhead. You tell him this kind of business is not appreciated. You tell him no boat is safe now. You tell him he’ll never see his precious toy again—he can kiss it good-bye.”
The Ilyushin was littered with fast-food wrappers and empty Tecate beer cans. Two black motorcycles blocked the aisle in first class, and most of the seats were taken up by the nine thousand DVDs Comrade Buc’s team had purchased in Los Angeles. Comrade Buc himself looked as though he hadn’t slept. He was camped out in the back of the plane where his boys were watching movies on fold-up computers.
Dr. Song meditated alone on the plane for some time, and he didn’t stir until they were far from Texas. He came to Jun Do. “You have a wife?” Dr. Song asked.
“A wife?”
“The Senator’s wife, she said the dog was for your wife. Is this true, have you a wife?”
“No,” Jun Do said. “I lied to explain the tattoo on my chest.”
Dr. Song nodded. “And the Senator, he figured out our ruse with the Minister, and he felt he could only put his faith in you. This is why you rode with him?”
“Yes,” Jun Do said. “Though the Senator said it was Wanda who figured it out.”
“Of course,” he said. “And concerning the Senator, what was the nature of your conversation?”
“He said that he disapproved of our tactics, that the boarding of fishing boats would continue, and that we would never see our precious toy again. That’s the message he wanted me to deliver.”
“To whom?”
“To the Dear Leader.”
“To the Dear Leader, you?” Dr. Song asked. “Why should he think you had his ear?”
“How should I know?” Jun Do asked. “He must have thought I was someone I’m not.”
“Yes, yes, that’s a useful tactic,” Dr. Song said. “We cultivated that.”
“I didn’t do anything wrong,” Jun Do said. “I don’t even know what toy he was talking about.”
“Fair enough,” Dr. Song said. He took Jun Do’s shoulder and squeezed it in a good-natured way. “I suppose it doesn’t matter now. You know what radiation is?”
Jun Do nodded.
“The Japanese invented an instrument called a background radiation detector. They