The Orphan Master's Son_ A Novel - Adam Johnson [94]
His busted lips looked pitiful, and his reddened ears were filling with fluid from being slapped with the soles of dress shoes. We could see old frostbite marks on his fingers, and his shirt had been torn off, revealing a tattoo on his chest of the actress Sun Moon. We shook our heads. Poor Sun Moon. There was also a large scar on his arm, though the rumors that Commander Ga had wrestled a bear were just that, rumors. In his rucksack, we found only a pair of black cowboy boots, a single can of peaches, and a bright red cell phone, battery dead.
“We’re here for your story,” we told him.
His face was still ringing from Pubyok fists.
“I hope you like happy endings,” he said.
We helped him to an interrogation bay and into his own Q & A chair. We gave him aspirin and a cup of water, and soon he was asleep.
We scribbled off a quick note that said, “Is not Commander Ga.” This we placed in a vacuum tube and, with a whoosh, sent it deep into the bunker complex below us, where all the decisions were made. How deep the bunker went and who exactly was down there, we didn’t know. The deeper the better was how I felt. I mean we felt.
Before we’d even turned to go, the vacuum tube had raced back and dropped into our hopper. When we opened it, the note inside read simply, “Is Commander Ga.”
It was only at the very end of the day, when we were about to hang up our smocks, that we returned to him. The swelling had started on the face of Commander Ga, or whoever he was, though there was something peaceful about his sleep. We noticed that his hands rested on his stomach, and they seemed to be typing, as if he were transcribing the dream he was having. We stared at his fingers awhile but could make no sense of what he might be writing.
“We’re not the ones who hurt you,” we said when we woke him. “That was the work of another party. Answer a simple question for us, and we’ll get you a room, a comfortable bed.”
Commander Ga nodded. There were so many questions we were dying to ask him.
But then our intern Q-Kee suddenly spoke up. “What did you do with the actress’s body?” she blurted out. “Where did you hide it?”
We took Q-Kee by the shoulder and led her out of the interrogation bay. She was the first female intern in the history of Division 42, and boy, was she a firebrand. The Pubyok were beside themselves that a woman was in the building, but to have a modern, forward-thinking interrogation division, a female interrogator was going to be essential.
“Start slow,” we told Q-Kee. “We’re building a relationship here. We don’t want to put him on the defensive. If we earn his trust, he’ll practically write his story for us.”
“Who cares about the biography?” she asked. “Once we find out the location of the dead actress and her kids, they’ll shoot him in the street. End of story.”
“Character is destiny,” we told her, reminding her of the famous quote from Kim Il Sung. “That means that once we discover the inside of a subject, what makes him tick, we not only know everything he’s done but everything he will do.”
Back in the interrogation bay, Q-Kee reluctantly asked a more appropriate question.
“How did you first meet the actress Sun Moon?” she asked.
Commander Ga closed his eyes. “So cold,” he said. “She was on the side of the infirmary. The infirmary was white. The snow fell heavily, it blocked my view of her. The battleship burned. They used the infirmary because it was white. Inside, people moaned. The water was on fire.”
“He’s worthless,” Q-Kee muttered.
She was right. It had been a long day. Up top, on ground level, the rust-colored light of afternoon would be stretching long now through downtown Pyongyang. It was time to call it quits and get home before the power went out.
“Wait,” Jujack said. “Just give us something, Commander Ga.”
The subject seemed to like being called Commander Ga.
Jujack went on, “Just tell us what you were dreaming about. Then we’ll take you to a room.”
“I was driving a car,” Commander Ga said. “An American car.”
“Yes,” Jujack said. “Keep