When I reached the big wooden door, I grabbed the edge, turned, and slammed it shut. I pulled the key from my pocket, jammed it home, and twisted until it locked.
Inside, furry bodies pelted the door. The bats that had escaped continued to swarm, swirling around me, then flew off toward the promise of juicy insects at the limpid ponds nearby.
I hurried up the walkway, wiping filth off my face, straightening my tunic. When I rounded a corner, she was standing there. Alone. Waiting for me. From her hand, a pistol was pointed right at my gut. She was beautiful in her high boots and long leather coat cinched at the waist. Her white face was luminescent, like the moon glimmering above, but grim and determined. I was defenseless against her, but I didn’t allow myself to think of that.
Instead, I kept walking.
There comes a moment when you have to decide whether to live or to die. You have to decide whether it’s better to raise your hands in surrender and enter a world of interrogation and torture-a world so full of pain that soon even death would seem preferable-or to take a stand and die.
I decided to die.
I kept walking, straight into the pistol pointed at me. I’d had enough. Enough of running and hiding and lying and living with constant physical agony and the unrelenting tension of thinking that every breath might be my last. I was finished. I’d done all I could do. If she pulled the trigger, it would be over quickly. There’d be no lingering minutes and hours and days and weeks of unbearable pain. It would just be done. I marched toward Senior Captain Rhee Mi-sook resolutely, staring right into her eyes, daring her to pull the trigger. In the glow of moonlight, she stared back impassively. Did I see a tightening in the arm holding the pistol, or was it my imagination? I kept waiting for the hot steel to rip into my stomach, for the jolt to knock me backward, but nothing happened. I was less than two strides away-it was now or never. I took one more step and reached out, viciously slapping the pistol out of her hand. It bounced on the stone steps.
And then I grabbed her.
She clawed at my eyes.
A man should never hit a woman. And I never have. I believe it to be cowardly, and the many men I’ve known who slapped their girlfriends or wives around were always-without exception-cowards. When faced with someone who can fight back, a man of equal strength and determination, they’d rather negotiate than fight. But when they’re alone with a woman-or worse yet, with children-they’re tough guys.
So I don’t like fighting a woman. But Senior Captain Rhee Mi-sook left me no choice. Now that her pistol was gone, she leaped at me like a cornered Siberian tigress.
She hadn’t shot me, I believed, because a dead Warsaw Pact officer would have been hard to explain. She’d have been the one on the defensive-the one put on trial. And no matter how convinced she was that I was not who I appeared to be, could she be 100 percent sure? What if she were wrong? It wasn’t worth it to pull the trigger and find herself sent off to die in a North Korean gulag. So she hesitated, and that hesitation saved my life. But she wasn’t hesitating now.
I dodged her sharp nails just in time, grabbing her wrists and twisting, but she responded in exactly the way a person of less weight and inferior upper body strength should respond. She became dead weight. She fell to the ground, yanking me down with her, and when she landed she started kicking me with her high-heeled boots. Off balance, I managed to avoid a vicious kick aimed at my groin, but it missed only by inches, slamming into my inner thigh. I cursed and stepped aside, still holding onto her wrists. I dragged her along the pathway, twisting her arms behind her torso and forcing her to flip over, and then rammed my knee down on her spine. She screeched and spit and I hoped to God no one could hear us out here. But she wasn’t yelling for help. There was a rage in her, a viciousness I’d seen in few people-men or women-and I believed that she wanted only to win. Finally, pinning down her squirming body, I managed to loosen her leather belt. At the stone monolith, I pulled her into a sitting position and belted her arms securely around the stone. Quickly, I pulled off her boots and ripped off her socks, shoving one into her mouth. She almost managed to bite off one of my fingers. Luckily, I pulled my hand back in time. Before she could spit out the sock, I pulled off the other sock and used it as a gag, tying it securely at the back of her head.
Now she was helpless.
Her long black hair was in disarray, some of it mushrooming out of her gag, some of it hanging loosely in front of her face. I knelt and stared directly into her eyes. Hatred looked back at me.
In Korean, I said, “When you’re angry, you’re beautiful.”
Her entire body jerked forward, but the bindings held. I touched my forefinger to the brim of my cap and saluted. Then I stood, turned my back on Senior Captain Rhee Mi-sook, and hurried off through the still, deserted grounds. The soldier at the First Corps headquarters checkpoint stood at attention. His eyes were wide-he didn’t see many foreigners. I marched toward him, glowering, fists swinging at my side. The smooth flesh of his face quivered with indecision.
All armies are the same. After beating unquestioning obedience into their soldiers, they still expect them to make informed independent judgments. Usually, it doesn’t work. I made my face even fiercer as I approached the guard. Finally, when I was only a few feet from him, he raised his right hand in salute. Smartly, I saluted back and strode past.
He didn’t move and I didn’t look back.
A complex of cement buildings stretched before me-the First Corps headquarters. I entered a side door and walked down a long hallway. Even at this late hour, there were signs of human activity.
I was in a fairly busy area now. The hallway was lined with offices with names that I didn’t fully understand but that contained words such as “logisticals” and “security” and “explosive ordnance.” Most of the people working here, both men and women, wore military uniforms and looked haggard, as if they’d been working many extra hours. Remembering Hye-kyong’s admonition, I marched down the center of the hallway as if the whole world would soon bow to my will. When I reached the main entranceway, I stepped through two double wooden doors and stood at a semicircular driveway that was the drop-off point in front of the First Corps headquarters.
Two soldiers eyed me nervously. “Where’s my car?” I barked.
They looked befuddled. I stood with my feet planted broadly in the center of the entranceway, hands on my hips, staring about impatiently for a car that I could only pray actually existed.
After what seemed like eons, an engine rumbled in the distance. As the car approached, I recognized it immediately. The same old Russian sedan Hero Kang had used to bring me here in the first place. White gloves gripped the wheel. Could it be Doc Yong? But my hopes were dashed-it wasn’t a woman at the wheel, it wasn’t even a chauffeur. It was Hero Kang. He was driving the sedan himself. In a country where human labor is dirt cheap, why did he drive himself? Probably, I thought, because he didn’t trust anyone else.