And then a young woman appeared by my side. The flickering light of the newsreel fell on a round face and a mouth set in a determined line. She was still wearing a military uniform.
“Even in the harshest of winters,” she whispered in Korean, “the mugunghwa blooms.”
The purple mugunghwa is the ancient national flower of Korea. The sturdy blossom springs to life throughout the length and breadth of the Korean peninsula. In recent times, the North Korean regime designated the mongnan, a type of magnolia, the new national flower in its place-a move the South Koreans never agreed with.
She waited for my answer.
“Especially, I’m told, on the highest mountains,” I whispered back.
She picked up a tray of cold meat and slipped a key in my hand. Without looking back, she carried the tray away through the side door of the hall. Holding it low so no one else could see it, I studied the key. It was large, old-fashioned, apparently made of brass. A number had been etched along its side: 444.
I stared at the key, twisting it in the dim light to make sure I was reading it right. There it was, three Arabic numerals: 444. I was surprised because I’d never before seen such a combination in South Korea. South Korean hotels don’t have a fourth floor, or even a room number four, much less a room numbered four forty-four.
Still, there it was. I clutched the key in my hand. Everyone seemed preoccupied. I slipped into the shadows by the wall and edged through the rustling clothes and gasping breaths until I’d made my way out into the empty hallway. In the moonlit courtyard, I crouched for a moment behind a tall shrub with sturdy branches.
I waited. No one was following. No sign of Captain Rhee Mi-sook. I crept away toward buildings that I hoped would be lodging for the cadres, still wondering about the curious numbers. Still wondering if I’d live through this night.
Four is the number of death.
In Chinese, the character for the number four is pronounced like the “su” in “surreal.” In Korean, the same character is pronounced “sa.” And in both cases the character for death is pronounced in exactly the same way. That’s why hotels in the Far East skip the fourth floor. Some hotels, especially those catering to Westerners, also manage to do without a thirteenth floor, thereby covering superstitions developed on both ends of the Eurasian landmass.
So I wondered at a room numbered 444. Were the North Koreans actively trying to eliminate old superstitions? If so, that was laudable. One of the few laudable things I’d seen this government do since I’d arrived.
The woman who’d handed me the key wasn’t after me for my body. In fact, a North Korean woman with any brains would avoid me like a cholera epidemic. Relationships with foreigners are nothing but trouble. Any sign of anything other than complete and utter loyalty to the Kim clan, any allegiance to any foreign power, could result in not only the offending person but also their entire family being sent to the North Korean version of the gulag. Conditions there were so bad that for most people a prison sentence was the equivalent of a death sentence.
So the woman who’d handed me this key had been very brave. It was my job now to find her without exposing her to more danger.
When I was sure no one was watching, I emerged from the shadow of the bush and strolled toward a tile-roofed building on the far side of a gurgling pond. It would be best to avoid people, to stick to the shadows, but not to seem that I was hiding. In case I was caught, I could play the role of the dumb foreigner-a role that every North Korean had been propagandized to accept-and claim that I was lost.
There were no lights on in the building. It was single-story, about twenty yards long. Above the doorway at the end, I searched for some sort of numbering system. Then I saw it, carved into an oblong wooden placard attached to the doorframe: 73. Building number 73. So this key probably belonged to building number 44. I gazed around me. Nothing moved, just dark buildings all about the same size as this one, moonlight glimmering off their tiled roofs. A lot of real estate, I thought, and a lot of well-maintained buildings not being put to good use. The Communist cadres could afford waste like this, while the working people, whom they were supposedly sworn to protect, lived in poorly heated hovels with one family crammed on top of another.
This country truly was paradise, if you had the right connections.
Would they miss me back at the main hall? Probably not for a while. At least not until the newsreels were over and the heavy breathing stopped.
Sticking to the shadows, I continued my search.
Just as I approached the building that I thought was number 44, I heard the whistle. It was low, so low that I couldn’t be sure it wasn’t only the gentle evening breeze wafting through the rose bushes. So low that I thought I’d imagined the sound and that it was no more than the quivering of my nervous system.
I froze, hidden behind a low rock wall.
There it was again, another low whistle.
Someone was trying to warn me. Of what?
I lowered myself almost flat on the ground, holding myself just off the grass in a push-up position. Carefully, I studied every shadow around me. Nothing. No movement. I rose slowly and slunk toward the entranceway of the building I thought was number 44.
It was unlike the others. In fact, it wasn’t a proper building at all, just a grassy hillock with a stone wall on one side, like an ammunition storage facility. But as I approached, the moonlight glinted off stone carvings, faded from years of erosion, and then I saw the carved placard: 44. Building 44, door number 4. This was it. I realized why it had been given the number of death and why it looked so much like an explosives storage facility. It was a tomb. An ancient tomb. The door, however, looked modern, made of iron rather than the hand-carved stone that surrounded it.
The ancient kingdom of Koguryo had many tombs scattered throughout North Korea and what is now Chinese Manchuria. I knew that some of the most famous tombs were located near Pyongyang. This was one of them.
Fingers touched my elbow.
I spun, my eyes wide, ready to fight.
I had to look down to see her face. It was the woman who’d handed me the key. She held a forefinger to her mouth, warning me to be quiet. Then she held out her palm.
After steadying myself and releasing my breath quietly, I placed the key in her hand. She motioned for me to step into the shadow of the mound and then shoved the key into a hole in the iron door. She tried to turn it, but it didn’t budge. She glanced back at me inquiringly. I stepped past her and tried the key. It seemed to be catching, but, predictably, the locking mechanism was rusted from disuse. I wished we had some lubricating oil, but we didn’t, so I pulled the key out of the lock, licked my fingertips, and rubbed spit along the edge. I placed the key back into the lock and turned. It resisted, but I kept a steady pressure on it, not enough to snap the key but enough to force the stubborn connections to give. Finally, the key groaned and the handle of the door sprung upward. I pulled on the handle and the door creaked open, disturbing soil and grass.
Stale air rushed out, as if grateful to be free. We stared at the stone steps leading down into a black pit.
I still didn’t know why I was here or what we were supposed to do. All I knew was that I had to trust this woman. She was my only hope of getting out of here in one piece.