Before fifth-level black-belt Pak hit the ground, he was out cold.
The referee screamed in outrage, shoving his arms in front of me. The men of the First Corps howled in anger and rushed toward me. Hero Kang shoved me from behind and I lost my footing, falling under a sea of rushing bodies. There were punches and kicks from every direction and I heard Hero Kang cursing above me. Out of the pile, a foot swung toward my head and suddenly everything went blank.
When I came to, I was lying facedown on stone.
I expected to hear the wet splash of the sponge and feel the cool dribble of soap on my skin, but instead all I felt was cold. A terrible cold. I tried to raise my head. A spasm of pain ran down my back. I controlled it and lifted my head as high as I could. The room was dark, no steam, no masseuse hovering nearby. There was only the sound of clanging metal far away and occasional distant voices. Flickering rays of light filtered through a high aperture. I studied the stone beneath me. It wasn’t stone at all. It was brick. I lifted myself to my feet, but before I could stand fully my head hit the roof. I shuffled toward the light and peered through a small barred window that I only now realized was part of a thick wooden door. The brick hallways outside were long and silent and empty.
Prison.
I took inventory of myself. I was only wearing jockey shorts and a soiled T-shirt, and suddenly I realized I was shivering, my teeth chattering from the cold. The cell was only a few steps across in either direction, and the only appurtenances were a metal bucket and a wood-slat bench made of ancient lumber, splintered and filthy.
Still, it was better than the floor.
I sat on the bench, crouched forward, wondering what had gone wrong with Hero Kang’s plans. I remembered the rage in people’s eyes, their desire to kill me. No wonder they’d thrown me in here. Maybe they’d done me a favor. It was better than being torn limb from limb by an angry mob. Sort of.
I thought of the torture in my future. Would they tie my wrists behind my back and hang me from the rafters, popping my shoulders out of joint? Would they turn me upside down and pour water up my nose? Or would they just practice their Taekwondo on me for hours at a time?
How long would I be able to withstand it?
Not long, I decided.
Whether or not my cover story would stand up to scrutiny depended on how well it had been prepared by the Manchurian Battalion. I tried to think of a fallback cover story, in case the Romanian one fell apart. Some way to convince the North Korean interrogators that I wasn’t an American spy.
Offhand, I couldn’t think of one.
6
The wooden door swung open. Startled, I sat up on the bench.
A guard entered, armed only with a billy club. Two other guards stood behind him, one with a Russian-made pistol strapped to his waist.
“Charyo!” the guard said. Attention!
I stood as best I could, but I had to keep my head bowed because of the low ceiling. Candlelight from the hallway cast a dim glow into my cell.
The guards stood aside and a small man in a military uniform entered the cell. I recognized him immediately-the man in charge of the Taekwondo tournament, Commissar Oh. He was smoking furiously, as if to dispel whatever odor this room might have, an odor I could no longer notice. He wore a loose cape and smoked from an ivory cigarette holder. He had the darting eyes of a fashion designer on opening night in Paris.
“Naimsei na!” he said, wrinkling his nose and glancing toward the bucket in the corner.
One of the guards hustled forward, grabbed the bucket, and carried it out of the tiny cell. With the offending filth removed, Commissar Oh looked me up and down. His eyes lingered on my crotch, as if he were fascinated by something. I decided not to flinch, nor to look downward to see what he was looking at. If my fly was open, so be it.
Finally, he looked back at my face and said something in Russian.
I stared at him blankly.
He exhaled in exasperation. Then he started speaking in Korean. “What are you, stupid? A Warsaw Pact officer and you don’t speak Russian. What the hell good are you?”
I continued to stare at him blankly, pretending that I didn’t understand, keeping the muscles in my face immobile so they wouldn’t betray me.
He puffed on his cigarette, squinting behind rising smoke. “Maybe I ought to chop you in pieces,” he said, still speaking in Korean, “and sell your rotten foreign flesh to a hog farm.”
A couple of the guards murmured in assent.
Commissar Oh glanced back at them angrily. “No one wants your opinion.”
They lowered their heads and became quiet.
“You embarrassed us today,” he continued, “attacking our First Corps champion like that, knocking him down. With trickery! You couldn’t have done that within the rules.”
He paced to his left, studying me as if I were indeed a lump of flesh he was planning on carving. I tried not to respond in any way. Stoic, like the war hero I was supposed to be.
How good was the cover story Hero Kang had constructed for me? Had Commissar Oh checked me out with the Foreign Ministry? Was he still convinced I was a Romanian officer? If they’d had any inkling that I was an American spy, they would have already been feeding me to a hog farm.
“What to do with you?” Commissar Oh said. “I can’t just let you go without punishment; it would be like covering our face with shit. You must make amends to our Great Leader.” He stared at me, waiting for a response. When he didn’t get one, he said, “You’ll have to pay for your crime somehow. And dearly.” He puffed mightily on the last of his cigarette until the filter glowed. “Foreigners. Always a problem.”
He tossed the butt on the ground and stomped it flat. He swiveled on his high-heeled leather boots and stalked out of the cell.
“Punish him!” he shouted to the guards. “Make him understand that he’s nothing but a miserable foreign beast. Less than human. Make him cry and kneel and praise the Great Leader.” Then he stopped, pointing his finger at the lead guard. “But don’t kill him.”
The guard nodded. When the door closed, I was left alone.
Nervously, I sat back down on the bench.
Ten minutes later, the guards returned, bearing straps and chains and the same bucket they’d removed from my cell, still sloshing with filth.
It seemed like years, but I knew that only two or three hours had passed since Commissar Oh had left my cell. Every part of my body hurt and I could still feel the filthy water clinging like slime to my sinus cavities and the back of my mouth. In the middle of the water torture, I’d lost all sense of pride. It was too much. When you can’t breathe, nothing is sweeter than the thought of air, of just being allowed the luxury of inhaling and exhaling. Finally, I blurted out in English, “No more!”
The guards who were torturing me were uneducated men and knew nothing of the language of their archenemy, America. Luckily for me. They probably assumed I was speaking Romanian. When I realized they weren’t going to stop, I shocked them by speaking Korean.
“Let me talk to Commissar Oh,” I told them.
By the way they stepped back and their eyes widened, you would’ve thought that an ape had just opened its mouth and recited a passage from Kim Il-sung’s Juche philosophy.
The good part was they stopped torturing me. Someone was sent to fetch Commissar Oh. They kept me shackled but allowed me to hobble over to the splintered wooden bench. I collapsed and, luxuriating in the sweet air entering and exiting my lungs, soon fell asleep.