Jun Do took a window seat as they flew north over Sakhalin, Kamchatka, and the Sea of Okhotsk, where the Captain had been imprisoned, somewhere down there in the blue. They outran the sunset by flying north, into perpetual summer light. They stopped at the Russian Air Force base in Anadyr to refuel, and all the old pilots came out to marvel at the sight of an Ilyushin Il-62, which they concluded was forty-seven years old. They ran their hands along the belly of the plane and talked about all the problems that were corrected in later versions, and everyone had a hair-raising story about flying them before the remnants of the fleet were shipped to Africa in the late ’80s. The tower operator came forward, a large man, and Jun Do could see the places he’d once had frostbite. The tower operator said even the Ilyushin’s replacements—the early Antonovs and Tupolevs—were rare these days. “I heard the last Ilyushin Il-62 went down in Angola in the year 1999,” he added.
Dr. Song broke into Russian. “It is lamentable,” he said, “that the once great nation that created this fine aircraft is no longer able to do so.”
Comrade Buc added, “Please know that news of your country’s complete collapse was met with sadness in our nation.”
“Yes,” Dr. Song said. “Your nation and ours were once the world’s twin beacons of communism. Sadly, we now bear that burden alone.”
Comrade Buc opened a suitcase of new U.S. hundred-dollar bills to pay for the fuel, but the tower operator shook his head no.
“Euros,” he said.
Indignant, Dr. Song said, “I am personal friends with the mayor of Vladivostok.”
“Euros,” said the tower operator.
Comrade Buc had another suitcase, it turned out, this one filled with European money.
As they were departing, Dr. Song told the pilots to make a statement. They rolled the engines hard during takeoff, rattling the airframe in a tremendous display of ascent.
The Aleutians, the international date line, and nine thousand meters up, the crisp outlines of container vessels against a stippled, green-white sea. The Captain had told Jun Do that off the east coast of Japan the ocean was nine thousand meters deep, and now he understood what that meant. Witnessing the vastness of the Pacific—how impossibly monumental that you could row across it!—he understood how rare his radio contacts had been.
Where was the arm of the captain of the Kwan Li? Jun Do suddenly wondered. In whose hands were his old dictionaries right now, and what person shaved this morning with the Captain’s brush? In what tunnel was his team now running, and what had become of the old woman they’d kidnapped, the one who said she would go willingly if she could take his picture? What could the look on his face have been, and what story did the Niigata bartender tell of the night she drank with kidnappers? The Second Mate’s wife suddenly came to him in her canning-line jumpsuit, her skin glistening with fish oil, her hair wild from steam, and that rustling yellow dress enveloped him, took him deep into sleep.
Somewhere over Canada, Dr. Song gathered everyone for a protocol briefing on the subject of Americans. He spoke to the Minister and Jun Do, as well as Comrade Buc’s team of six. The copilot and stewardess eavesdropped. Dr. Song prefaced everything with a preamble on the evils of capitalism and a recounting of American war crimes against subjugated peoples. Then he began by tackling the concept of Jesus Christ, examining the special case of the American Negro, and listing the reasons Mexicans defected to the United States. Next, he explained why affluent Americans drove their own cars and spoke to their servants as equals.
One young man asked how to behave should he encounter a homosexual.
“Point out that this is a new experience for you,” Dr. Song said, “as there are no such individuals where you are from. Then treat him as you would any visiting Juche scholar from foreign lands like Burma or Ukraine or Cuba.”
Dr. Song then got practical. He said it was okay to wear shoes indoors. Women were free to smoke in America and should not be confronted. Disciplining other people’s children in America was not okay. He drew for them on a piece of paper the shape of a football. With great discomfort, Dr. Song touched on American standards of personal hygiene, and then he delivered a mini-lecture on the subject of smiling. He concluded with dogs, noting how Americans were very sentimental, with a particular softness toward canines. You must never hurt a dog in America, he said. They are considered part of the family and are given names, just like people. Dogs also have their own beds and toys and doctors and houses, which should not be referred to as warrens.
When they finally began their descent, Comrade Buc sought out Jun Do.
“About Dr. Song,” he said. “He’s had a long and famous career, but in Pyongyang, you’re only as safe as your last success.”
“Safe?” Jun Do asked. “Safe from what?”
Comrade Buc touched the watch that Jun Do now wore. “You just help him succeed.”
“What about you, why aren’t you coming with us?”
“Me?” Comrade Buc asked. “I’ve got twenty-four hours to get to Los Angeles, buy three hundred thousand dollars’ worth of DVDs, and then get back. Is it true you’ve never seen a movie?”
“I’m not a rube or anything. I just never had the opportunity.”
“Now’s your chance,” Comrade Buc said. “Dr. Song has requested a movie about sopranos.”
“I’d have no way of playing a DVD,” Jun Do told him.
“You’d find a way,” Comrade Buc said.
“What about Sun Moon? I’d see a movie starring her.”
“They don’t sell our films in America.”
“Is it true that she’s sad?”
“Sun Moon?” Comrade Buc nodded. “Her husband Commander Ga and the Dear Leader are rivals. Commander Ga is too famous to punish, so it is his wife who gets no more movie roles. We hear her next door. She plays the gayageum all day, teaching that sad, wandering sound to her children.”
Jun Do could see her fingers pluck the strings, each note striking, flaring, and losing timbre like a match that burns to smoke.
“Last chance for an American movie,” Comrade Buc said. “They’re the only real reason to learn English.”
Jun Do tried to gauge the nature of the offer. In Comrade Buc’s eyes, Jun Do saw a look he knew well from childhood, the look of a boy who thought the next day would be better. Those boys never lasted. Still, Jun Do liked them the most.
“Okay,” he said. “Which one’s the best?”
“Casablanca,” Comrade Buc said. “They say that one is the greatest.”
“Casablanca,” Jun Do said. “I’ll take that one.”
It was morning when they landed at Dyess Air Force Base south of Abilene, Texas.
Jun Do’s nocturnal schedule served him now on the other side of the world. He was awake and alert—through the Ilyushin’s yellowed window, he could see that two older cars had pulled onto the blacktop to meet them. There were three Americans in hats out there, two men and a woman. When the Ilyushin rested its engines, they rolled up a metal stairway.
“In twenty-four hours,” Dr. Song said as a farewell to Comrade Buc.
Comrade Buc executed a quick bow, and then opened the door.
The air was dry. It smelled of hot metal and withered cornstalks. Fighter jets, a row of them, were parked at a shimmering distance—they were things Jun Do had only seen in inspirational murals.
At the bottom of the stairs, their three hosts were waiting. Standing in the center was the Senator, who was perhaps older than Dr. Song, yet tall and tan in blue pants and an embroidered shirt. Jun Do could see a molded medical device filling the Senator’s ear. If Dr. Song was sixty, the Senator must have had a decade on him.
Tommy was the Senator’s friend, a black man, much the same age, though leaner, with hair that had gone white and a face more deeply creased. And then there was Wanda. She was young, thick-bodied, and had a yellow ponytail sticking out the back of a ball cap that read “Blackwater.” She wore a red cowgirl shirt with silver snaps.
“Minister,” the Senator said.
“Senator,” the Minister said, and there were general greetings all around.
“Come,” the Senator said. “We’ve got a little side trip planned.”
The Senator directed the Minister toward an old American car. When the Minister moved to open the driver’s-side door, the Senator gently directed him to the other side.
Tommy indicated a white convertible whose chrome lettering proclaimed “Mustang.”
“I must travel with them,” Dr. Song said.
“They’re in a Thunderbird,” Wanda said. “It only seats two.”
“But they don’t speak the same language,” Dr. Song said.
Tommy said, “Half a Texas don’t speak the same language.”
The Mustang, top down, followed the Thunderbird out onto a county road. Jun Do rode in the backseat with Dr. Song. Tommy drove.
Wanda lifted her head into the wind, moving her face back and forth, enjoying it. Far ahead and far behind, Jun Do could make out the black of security vehicles. The side of the road glimmered with broken glass. Why would a country be strewn with razor-sharp glass? To Jun Do, it seemed like some tragedy had taken place every step of the way. And where were all the people? A barbed-wire fence paced them, making it feel as if they were in a normal control-permit zone. But rather than concrete poles with insulators for the electricity, the posts were made from gnarled, bleached branches that looked like broken limbs or old bones, as if something had died to build every five meters of that fence.
“This is quite a special car,” Dr. Song said.
“It’s the Senator’s,” Tommy said. “We’ve been friends since our Army days.” Tommy’s arm was hanging outside the car in the wind. He slapped the metal twice. “I had known war in Vietnam,” he said. “And I had known Jesus, but it wasn’t till I borrowed this Mustang, with rolled-and-tucked backseats, that I knew Mary McParsons and took my first breath as a man.”
Wanda laughed.
Dr. Song shifted uncomfortably on the leather.
Jun Do could see on the face of Dr. Song the great insult that had been done him to be informed he was sitting where Tommy had once had intercourse.
“Oh,” Tommy went on, “I cringe when I think of the guy I used to be. Thank God I ain’t still him. I married that woman, by the way. I did that right, rest her soul.”
Dr. Song observed a political sign bearing the image of the Senator and an American flag. “There is an election coming, no?” he asked.
“That’s right,” Tommy said. “The Senator’s got a primary in August.”
“We are lucky, Jun Do,” Dr. Song said, “to witness American democracy in action.”
Jun Do tried to think of how Comrade Buc would respond. “Most exciting,” Jun Do said.
Dr. Song asked, “Will the Senator retain his representative position?”
“It’s pretty much a sure thing,” Tommy said.
“A sure thing?” Dr. Song asked. “That doesn’t sound very democratic.”
Jun Do said, “That’s not how we were taught democracy works.”
“Tell me,” Dr. Song said to Tommy. “What will be the voter turnout?”
Tommy looked at them in the rearview mirror. “Of registered voters? For a primary, that would be about forty percent.”
“Forty percent?” Dr. Song exclaimed. “Voter turnout in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is ninety-nine percent—the most democratic nation in the world! Still, the United States needn’t feel shame. Your country can still be a beacon for countries with lower turnouts, like Burundi, Paraguay, and Chechnya.”
“Ninety-nine-percent turnout?” Tommy marveled. “With democracy like that, I’m sure you’ll soon be over a hundred.”
Wanda laughed, but then she looked back, caught Jun Do’s eye, and offered him a smile that was sly-eyed, seeming to include him in the humor.
Tommy looked at them in the rearview mirror. “You don’t actually believe that ‘most democratic nation’ business, do you? You know the truth about where you’re from, right?”
Wanda said, “Don’t ask them questions like that. The wrong answer could get them in trouble back home.”
Tommy said, “Tell me you at least know the South won the war. Please know that much.”
“But you’re wrong, my dear Thomas,” Dr. Song said. “I believe it was the Confederacy that lost the war. It was the North that prevailed.”
Wanda smiled at Tommy. “He got you on that one,” she said.
Tommy laughed. “He sure did.”
They pulled off the road at a cowboy emporium. The parking lot was empty save for the Thunderbird and a black car parked to the side. Inside, several salespersons were waiting to outfit the visitors in Western attire. Dr. Song translated to the Minister that cowboy boots were gifts from the Senator and he could have any pair he wished. The Minister was fascinated by the exotic boots and tried on pairs made from lizard, ostrich, and shark. Finally he decided on snake, and the staff began seeking out pairs in his size.
Dr. Song conferred briefly with the Minister, then announced, “The Minister must make a defecate.”
The Americans clearly wished to laugh, but didn’t dare.
The Minister was gone a long time. Jun Do found a pair of black boots that spoke to him, but in the end he set them aside. He then went through many pairs of women’s boots before he found some he thought would fit the Second Mate’s wife. They were yellow and stiff, with fancy stitching around the toe.
Dr. Song was offered smaller and smaller sizes, until finally a pair of simple black boots fit him in a boy’s size. To help save face, Jun Do turned to Dr. Song. “Is it true,” he said loudly, “that you take the exact shoe size as the Dear Leader Kim Jong Il?”
Everyone watched as Dr. Song took a pleasant stroll in his boots, dress shoes in his hands. He stopped before a mannequin in cowboy clothes. “Observe, Jun Do,” he said. “Instead of their most beautiful women, the Americans employ artificial people to display the clothes.”
“Most ingenious,” Jun Do said.
“Perhaps,” Wanda said, “our most beautiful women are otherwise engaged.”
Dr. Song bowed at the truth of this. “Of course,” he said. “How shortsighted of me.”
On the wall, mounted behind a piece of glass, was an ax. “Look,” Dr. Song said. “The Americans are always prepared for a sudden outbreak of violence.”
The Senator glanced at his watch, and Jun Do could tell he’d had enough of this game.
The Minister returned and was handed a pair of boots. Each scale of the snakeskin seemed to catch the light. Clearly pleased, the Minister took a few steps in them like a gunslinger.
“Have you seen this movie High Noon?” Dr. Song asked them. “It is the Minister’s favorite.”
And suddenly the Senator was smiling again.
Dr. Song spoke to the Minister. “They fit perfectly, no?” he asked.
The Minister looked sadly down at his new boots. He shook his head.
The Senator snapped his fingers. “Let’s get some more boots over here,” he told the sales clerks.
“I’m sorry,” Dr. Song said. He sat to remove his own boots. “But the Minister believes it would be an insult to the Dear Leader to receive the gift of new boots when the Dear Leader himself received none.”
Jun Do returned the boots he’d chosen for the Second Mate’s wife. It was a fantasy idea, anyway, he knew. The Minister, too, sat to pull off his boots.
“This can be easily fixed,” the Senator said. “Of course we can send a pair of boots to Mr. Kim. We know he takes the same size as Dr. Song here. We’ll just get an extra pair.”
Dr. Song laced his dress shoes back on.
“The only insult,” Dr. Song said, “would be for a humble diplomat such as myself to wear shoes fit for the most revered leader of the greatest nation on earth.”
Wanda’s eyes passed back and forth upon this scene. Her gaze landed on Jun Do, and he knew it was him that she was puzzling over.
They left without boots.