As she stared at the clerk in military uniform who sat at the metal desk next to the door she would at some point pass through, Chung-Cha let her mind wander back, far back, but not that far really, to Yodok, where part of her would always be imprisoned, no matter how far away from it she got.
There were teachers there who taught the children basic grammar, a few numbers, and that was about it. As one got older the instruction became all about the life of labor to come. Chung-Cha had commenced work in the mines at age ten, clawing rock from other rock and being beaten for not making her quotas.
Every student in the class was encouraged to snitch on every other student, and Chung-Cha was no exception to this. The rewards were meager, though back then they seemed like a mountain of gold: fewer beatings, a bit more cabbage and salt, fewer self-censure meetings where students were forced to confess to imaginary sins that they would be beaten for. Chung-Cha had gotten to the point where she came to class every day with invented sins to present to the teacher, because if you had none, the thrashings were twice as painful. It seemed to delight the teachers when students spoke of their weaknesses and the things that made them small, insignificant, less than human. In the camps the teacher was also your guard. But the only things they taught were cruelty, deceit, and pain.
There had been a girl a little older than Chung-Cha who had been accused by her parents of stealing a portion of their food. The parents had turned her in, after beating her.
Chung-Cha had come forward because she had seen that it was the parents who had taken food from their child and then blamed her for the crime.
Chung-Cha’s reward for that was to be led into the prison located underneath the camp and hung upside down in a cage where guards continually poked her hour after hour with sword tips heated by a fire. She could smell her skin burning, yet she did not bleed much because the hot metal cauterized the wounds.
It was never explained to her why she was punished for telling the truth. When she was finally released and sent back to camp, the girl she had helped snitched on her. For that Chung-Cha was beaten by three guards until she could not move but just lay on the floor praying to die.
They bandaged her wounds, and the next day she was sent into the fields to pick her allotment of crops. When she failed to do so, her father was brought in to beat her, and he did so energetically, for he would be beaten even harder by the guards if he did not. And the other workers spit on her, because the way things worked here was that everyone suffered when one person failed to do his or her job.
Every day for a week she was flogged by the guards in the middle of camp for all to see. Prisoners hurled spit and curses at her and added their own beatings when the floggings were done.
When Chung-Cha had staggered off after this latest session she had heard one guard say, “She’s a tough little bitch.”
Chung-Cha absently rubbed the scars on her arms where the flamed sword had punctured her. The girl who had snitched on her had died the next month. Chung-Cha had lured her to a lonely spot with the promise of a handful of corn and had pushed her off a cliff. They had not found her body, what was left of it, until that winter.
From that day forward Chung-Cha, the “tough little bitch,” never told the truth again.
The door opened and the man looked at her. He was also dressed in a military uniform. He was a high-ranking general. To Chung-Cha they all looked the same. Short, wiry, with small, beady eyes and cruel features. They could all be guards at Yodok. Perhaps they all had been.
He motioned her in.
She rose and followed him into the office.
He closed the door and indicated a chair. She took it. He sat behind his metal desk, put his palms together, and studied her.
“This is all quite extraordinary, Dongmu Yie,” he said.
Dongmu. That meant comrade. She was his comrade, but not really. She was no one’s comrade. Self-reliance. She was her own comrade; that was all. And he clearly did not want her as a comrade.
She said nothing in response. It was extraordinary. She could add no more to the statement. And the prison camp had taught her that it was better to say nothing than to say something that you could be beaten for.
“He is a respected man,” said the general. “He is my great friend.”
Again, she remained silent.
But she kept her gaze directly on him. Normally, a North Korean male would not like that, particularly when faced by a female. But her stare did not waver. She had long ago lost the capacity to fear men like this. She had been hurt physically and psychologically every way she could have been. There was nothing left. So there was no reason to fear.
The general pulled out the cell phone that she had taken from Lloyd Carson in Bucharest. When she had called the number last dialed by Carson, General Pak had answered.
General Pak was indeed a greatly respected man here. He was in the very inner circle of the Supreme Leader; some said he was his most trusted advisor.
Yet she had recognized the man’s voice on the other end of the phone. She had heard him speak. She had met with him once in person, though it had been many years ago. But she would never forget that meeting. It had definitely been his voice on the phone.
She was snitching once more, Chung-Cha knew. But that was her job now. The Brit Lloyd Carson had attracted the attention of the North Korean security forces. He had been seen in the company of known American agents. It was well known in North Korea that the Brits and the Americans were joined at the hip. She had been assigned to track him, search his things, and, if necessary, kill him as he traveled on his train journey.
Well, she had tracked him, searched his things, and killed him. And she had the phone. And they had her testimony, that it was General Pak, the respected one. The great friend of the man seated opposite her. It was a delicate situation, she knew. It was a potentially deadly one for her.
“The phone number is not traceable. When we called the number no one answered,” said the general. “So we only have your word, Dongmu Yie. Against that of a revered leader.” He put the phone down and looked quizzically at her.
She finally decided to speak, but chose her words with great care. “I have made my report. I have told you what I know. I have no more than that to offer.”
“And you could not be mistaken about this, about the voice you heard? Are you absolutely certain?”
Chung-Cha knew exactly what he wanted to hear. He was not, however, going to hear it from her. He was going to hear something else.
She reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone. She hit a few buttons and held it up. She had turned the speaker on.
A voice could be heard clearly speaking in English.
“Hello, hello. Mr. Carson, is that you? Hello? Are you calling back? Is something wrong?”
The general jerked forward in his seat, knocking over a jar of pens sitting on his desk. He looked first at the phone and then at Chung-Cha.
“That is General Pak’s voice.”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“Where did you get this?”
“I recorded it when I called the North Korean number from Bucharest.”
He banged the desk with his fists. “Why did you not show us this before?”
“I hoped that you would believe the word of a loyal agent of the Supreme Leader over that of a traitor.”
The door opened and two more men came in. They were also generals. It seemed to Chung-Cha that North Korea had far too many generals.
These men were outranked by the one sitting across from her. But things like that could change swiftly in her country. Generals came, generals went. They were executed. She had already visited these two, let them listen to the phone recording, and then she had come here. The men behind her were too cowardly to face their higher-ranking comrade, so they had sent her in first.