The Orphan Master's Son_ A Novel - Adam Johnson [9]
Officer So spoke to Gil, “Tell him our boat was damaged, that it sank.”
Gil spoke to the diver, who gestured wildly and laughed.
“I know your boat sank,” Gil translated back. “It almost landed on my head.”
Then the diver noticed the fishing vessel in the distance. He cocked his head at it.
Gil clapped the diver on the back and said something to him. The diver stared hard into Gil’s eyes and then panicked. Abalone divers, it turned out, carried a special kind of knife on their ankles, and Jun Do was a long time in subduing him. Finally, Jun Do took the diver’s back and began to squeeze, the water wringing from his wetsuit as the scissors choke sank in.
When the knife was flying, Gil had jumped overboard.
“What the fuck did you say to him?” Jun Do demanded.
“The truth,” Gil said, treading water.
Officer So had caught a pretty good gash in the forearm. He closed his eyes at the pain of it. “More practice,” is all he could say.
They put the diver in the fishing boat’s hold and continued to the mainland. That night, offshore from the town of Fukura, they put the Avon in the water. Next to Fukura’s long fishing pier, a summer amusement park had set up, with lanterns strung and old people singing karaoke on a public stage. Here Jun Do and Gil and Officer So hovered beyond the beach break, waiting for the neon piping on the roller coaster to go dark, for the monkeyish organ music of the midway to fall silent. Finally, a solitary figure stood at the end of the pier. When they saw the red of a cigarette, they knew it was a man. Officer So started the engine.
They motored in on idle, the pier towering as they came astern it. Where its pilings entered the heavy surf, there was chaos, with some waves leaping straight up and others deflecting out perpendicular to shore.
“Use your Japanese,” Officer So told Gil. “Tell him you lost your puppy or something. Get close. Then—over the rail. It’s a long fall, and the water’s cold. When he comes up, he’ll be fighting to get in the boat.”
Gil stepped out when they reached the beach. “I’ve got it,” he said. “This one’s mine.”
“Oh, no,” Officer So said. “You both go.”
“Seriously,” Gil said. “I think I can handle it.”
“Out,” Officer So said to Jun Do. “And wear those damn glasses.”
The two of them crossed the tide line and came to a small square. Here were benches and a little plaza, a shuttered tea stand. There seemed to be no statue, and they could not tell what the square glorified. The trees were full with plums, so ripe the skins broke and juice ran in their hands. It seemed impossible, a thing not to be trusted. A grubby man was sleeping on a bench, and they marveled at it, a person sleeping any place he wished.
Gil stared at all the town houses around them. They looked traditional, with dark beams and ceramic roofs, but you could tell they were brand new.
“I want to open all these doors,” he said. “Sit in their chairs, listen to their music.”
Jun Do stared at him.
“You know,” Gil said. “Just to see.”
The tunnels always ended with a ladder leading up to a rabbit hole. Jun Do’s men would vie to be the ones to slip out and wander South Korea for a while. They’d come back with stories of machines that handed out money and people who picked up dog shit and put it in bags. Jun Do never looked. He knew the televisions were huge and there was all the rice you could eat. Yet he wanted no part of it—he was scared that if he saw it with his own eyes, his entire life would mean nothing. Stealing turnips from an old man who’d gone blind from hunger? That would have been for nothing. Sending another boy instead of himself to clean vats at the paint factory? For nothing.
Jun Do threw away his half-eaten plum. “I’ve had better,” he said.
On the pier, they walked planking stained from years of bait fishing. Ahead, at the end, they could see a face, lit from the blue glow of a mobile phone.
“Just get him over the rail,” Jun Do said.
Gil took a breath. “Over the rail,” he repeated.
There