The Orphan Master's Son_ A Novel - Adam Johnson [85]
But Jun Do wouldn’t take the dog. “It’s a gift for Sun Moon,” he said. “Will you get it to her for me?”
Jun Do could see the questions moving through Comrade Buc’s eyes, but he voiced none of them. Instead, Comrade Buc offered a simple nod.
The landing gear was lowered, and on approach, the goats on the runway somehow knew the moment to wander away. But touching down, Dr. Song saw the vehicles that were waiting to meet the plane, and he turned, panic on his face.
“Forget everything,” he called to the Minister and Jun Do. “The plan must completely change.”
“What is it?” Jun Do asked. He looked at the Minister, whose eyes showed fear.
“There’s no time,” Dr. Song said. “The Americans never intended to return what they stole from us. You got that? That’s the new story.”
They huddled in the galley, bracing themselves as the pilots leaned hard on the brakes.
“The new story is this,” Dr. Song said. “The Americans had an elaborate plan to humiliate us. They made us do groundskeeping and cut the Senator’s weeds, yes?”
“That’s right,” Jun Do said. “We had to eat outside, with our bare hands, surrounded by dogs.”
The Minister said, “There was no band or red carpet to greet us. And they drove us around in obsolete cars.”
“We were shown nice shoes at a store, but then they were put away,” Jun Do said. “At dinner, they made us wear peasant shirts.”
The Minister said, “I had to share my bed with a dog!”
“Good, good,” Dr. Song said. He had a desperate smile on his face, but his eyes sparkled with the challenge. “This will speak to the Dear Leader. This might save our skins.”
The vehicles on the runway were Soviet Tsirs, three of them. The crows were all manufactured in Chongjin, at the Sungli 58 factory, so Jun Do had seen thousands of them. They were used to move troops and cargo, and they had hauled many an orphan. In the rainy season, a Tsir was the only thing that could move at all.
Dr. Song refused to look at the crows or their drivers smoking together on the running boards. He smiled broadly and greeted the two men who were there to debrief them. But the Minister, grim faced, couldn’t stop staring, at the tall truck tires, the drum fuel tanks. Jun Do suddenly understood that if someone were to be transported from Pyongyang to a prison camp, only a crow could get you over the bad mountain roads.
Jun Do could see the giant portrait of the Great Leader Kim Il Sung atop the airport terminal. But the two debriefers led them in a different direction—past a group of women in jumpsuits who faced a pile of shovels as they did their morning calisthenics and past a plane whose fuselage lay on the ground, blowtorched into four sections. Old men seated on buckets were stripping the copper wire from it.
They came to an empty hangar, voluminous inside. Potholes in the cement floor were pooled with muddy water. There were several mechanics’ bays filled with tools, lifts, and workbenches, and Dr. Song, the Minister, and Jun Do were each placed in one, just out of sight of one another.
Jun Do sat at a table with the debriefers, who began going through his things.
“Tell us about your trip,” one said. “And don’t leave anything out.”
There was a hooded typewriter on the table, but they made no move to use it.
At first, Jun Do only mentioned the things they’d agreed upon—the indignities of dogs, the paper plates, of eating under the hot sun. As he spoke, the two men opened his bourbon and, drinking, both approved. They divided his cigarettes right in front of him. They seemed especially fond of the little flashlight, and they interrupted him to make sure he wasn’t hiding another. They