They moved to another floor, to another room that looked just like the last one. Ga understood that sameness was meant to confuse an invading force, but wasn’t the effect worse on those who must daily endure it? In the halls, he could feel the presence of security teams, always just out of sight, making the Dear Leader seem eternally alone.
In the room was a school desk with a lone computer monitor, its green cursor blinking. “Here’s the machine I promised to show you,” the Dear Leader said. “Were you secretly mad at me for making you wait?”
“Is this the master computer?” Ga asked.
“It is,” the Dear Leader answered. “We used to have a dummy version, but that was only for interrogations. This one contains the vital information for every single citizen—it tells you date of birth or date of death, current location, family members, and so on. When you type in a citizen’s name, all this information is sent to a special agency that dispatches a crow right away.”
The Dear Leader ushered Commander Ga into the chair. Before him was only the black of the screen, that green flash. “Everyone’s in here?” Ga asked.
“Every man, woman, and child,” the Dear Leader said. “When a name is typed on this screen, it is sent to our finest team. They act with great dispatch. The person in question will be found and transported right away. There is no evading its reach.”
The Dear Leader pushed a button, and on the screen appeared a number: 22,604,301.
He pressed the button again, and the number changed: 22,604,302.
“Witness the miracle of life,” the Dear Leader said. “Do you know we are fifty-four-percent female? We didn’t discover that until this machine. They say that famine favors the girls. In the South, it’s the opposite. They have a machine that can tell if a baby will be a boy or a girl, and the girls they dispose of. Can you imagine that, killing a girl baby, still in the mother?”
Ga said nothing—all babies in Prison 33 were killed. Every couple of months, there was a termination day in which rows of pregnant inmates had their bellies injected with saline. The guards had a wooden box on casters that they pushed around with their feet. Into this went, one by one, purple and dogpaddling, the partly developed babies as they came.
“But we will have the last word,” the Dear Leader said. “A version is being created with every South Korean’s name inside, so that there will be no one beyond our reach. That’s real reunification, don’t you think, being able to place a guiding hand on the shoulder of every Korean, North or South? With good infiltration teams, it will be like the DMZ doesn’t exist. In the spirit of One Korea, I offer you a gift. Type in the name of a person you’d like found, for whom resolution is lacking, and they will be dealt with. Go ahead, any name. Perhaps someone who wronged you during the Arduous March or a rival from the orphanage.”
The parade of people came to Ga, all those whose absences hung like empty dry docks in his memory. Throughout his life, he’d felt the presence of people he’d lost, eternally just out of reach. And here he was, seated before the collected fates of everyone. Yet he did not know his parents’ names, and the only information an orphan’s name gives is that he’s an orphan. Since Sun Moon had come into his life, he’d stopped wondering what had happened to Officer So and the Second Mate and his wife. The Captain’s name is the one he would have typed, but there was no need for that now. And Mongnan and Dr. Song, those were the last names he’d enter, as he wanted them to live forever in his memory. In the end, there was only one person who was haunting him, whose fate and location he had to know about. Commander Ga put his fingers to the keys and typed “Commander Ga Chol Chun.”
When the Dear Leader saw this, he was beside himself. “Oh, that’s rich,” he said. “Oh, that’s a new one. You know what this machine does, right, you know what kind of team waits for these names? It’s good, too good, but I can’t let you do it.” The Dear Leader hit the Delete button and shook his head. “He typed his own name. Wait till I tell everyone at dinner tonight. Wait till they hear the story of how the Commander entered his own name into the master computer.”
The green blinked at Ga like a faraway pulse in the dark.
The Dear Leader clapped him on the shoulder. “Come,” he said. “One last thing. I need you to translate something for me.”
When they reached the Girl Rower’s cell, the Dear Leader paused outside. He leaned against the wall, tapping the key against the cement. “I don’t want to let her go,” he said.
Of course a deal had been struck, the Americans would be here in a few days and breaking a deal like this would never be forgiven. But Ga didn’t mention any of that. He said, “I understand exactly how you feel.”
“She has no idea what I’m talking about when I speak to her,” the Dear Leader said. “But that’s okay. She has a curious mind, I can tell. I’ve been visiting her for a year. I’ve always needed someone like that, someone I can say things to. I like to think she enjoys my visits. Over time I think I have grown on her. How she makes you work for a smile, but when she gives you one, it’s real, you know it.”
The Dear Leader’s eyes were small and searching, as if he was trying not to see the fact that he would have to give her up. It was the way your eyes could scan the sloshing water in the bottom of a skiff because to look anywhere else—at the beach or the duct tape in your hands or Officer So’s stony face—was to acknowledge you were trapped, that very soon you’d be forced to do the thing you abhorred the most.
“I have read that there is a syndrome,” the Dear Leader said. “In this syndrome, a female captive begins to sympathize with her captor. Often it leads to love. Have you heard of this?”
The idea seemed impossible, preposterous, to him. What person could shift allegiance toward their oppressor? Who could possibly sympathize with the villain who stole your life?
Ga shook his head.
“The syndrome is real, I assure you. The only problem is they say it sometimes takes years to work, which it seems we don’t have.” He looked at the wall. “When you said you understood how I felt, did you mean that?”
“I did,” he said. “I do.”
The Dear Leader studied closely the ridges of the key in his hand. “I suppose you do,” he said. “You have Sun Moon. I used to confide in her. Yes, I used to tell her everything. That was years ago. Before you came and took her.” He looked at Ga now, shaking his head. “I can’t believe you’re still alive. I can’t believe I didn’t throw you to the Pubyok. Tell me, where am I going to find another girl rower? One who’s tall and beautiful and who listens, a girl whose heart is true and yet she still knows how to take the blood out of her friend with her bare hands?” He stuck the key in the lock. “So she doesn’t understand the words I say to her—she gets the meaning, I’m sure of it. And she doesn’t need words—everything she feels crosses her face. Sun Moon was that way. Sun Moon was exactly like that,” he said, and turned the key in the lock.
Inside, the Girl Rower was at her studies. Her notebooks were stacked high, and she was silently transcribing an English version of The Vigorous Zeal of the Revolutionary Spirit by Kim Jong Il.
The Dear Leader stood leaning against the open doorframe, admiring her at a distance.
“She’s read every word I’ve written,” he said. “That’s the truest way to know the heart of another. Can you imagine it, Ga, if that syndrome is real, an American in love with me? Wouldn’t that be the ultimate victory? A brawny, beautiful American girl. Wouldn’t that be the last word?”
Ga knelt next to her and slid the lamp across the table so he could get a better look. Her skin was so pale it seemed translucent. There was a rattle when she breathed from the damp air.
The Dear Leader said, “Ask her if she knows what a choson-ot is. I honestly doubt it. She hasn’t seen another woman in a year. I bet the last woman she saw was being killed by her own hands.”
Ga got her to lock eyes with him. “Do you want to go home?” he asked her.
She nodded.
“Excellent,” the Dear Leader said. “So she does know what a choson-ot is. Tell her I’ll have someone come fit her for one.”
“This is very important,” Ga said to her. “The Americans are going to try to come get you. Right now, in your notebook, I need you to write what I say: Wanda, accept—”
“Tell her she will get her first bath, too,” the Dear Leader interrupted. “And assure her it will be a woman that helps her.”
Ga went on. “Write exactly what I say: Wanda, accept food aid, dog, and books.”
While she wrote, he looked back at the Dear Leader, backlit by the corridor lights.
The Dear Leader said to him, “Maybe I should let her out, take her to that spa treatment at the Koryo Hotel. She might start to look forward to things like that.”
“Excellent idea,” Ga told him, then turned to the girl. Quietly, clearly, he said, “Add: Hidden guests bring a valuable laptop.”
“Maybe I should spoil her a little,” the Dear Leader mused, looking at the ceiling. “Ask her if there’s anything she wants, anything.”
“When we leave, destroy that paper,” Ga told her. “Trust me, I’m going to get you home. In the meantime, is there anything you need?”
“Soap,” she said.
“Soap,” he told the Dear Leader.
“Soap?” the Dear Leader asked. “Didn’t you just tell her that she was getting a bath?”
“Not soap,” Ga told her.
“Not soap?” she asked. “Toothpaste, then. And a brush.”
“She meant the kind of soap you clean your teeth with,” Ga told him. “You know, toothpaste and a brush.”
The Dear Leader stared first at her, then at him. He pointed the cell key at Ga.
“She grows on a person, doesn’t she?” the Dear Leader asked. “How can I give her up? Tell me, what do you think the Americans would do if they came here, returned my property, got humiliated, and left with nothing but bags of rice and a mean dog?”
“I thought that was the plan.”
“Yes, that was the plan. But all my advisors, they’re like mice in a munitions factory. They tell me not to anger the Americans, that I can only push them so far, that now that the Americans know the Girl Rower’s alive, they’ll never relent.”
“The girl is yours,” Ga said. “That is the only fact. People must understand that whether she stays or goes or becomes a cinder in Division 42, it is as you wish it. If the Americans receive a tutorial in this fact, it doesn’t matter what happens to her.”
“True, true,” the Dear Leader said. “Except I don’t want to let her go. Is there a way, you think?”
“If the girl met with the Senator and told him herself that she wished to stay, then maybe there would be no incident.”
The Dear Leader shook his head at that distasteful suggestion. “If only I had another girl rower,” he said. “If only our little killer here hadn’t done away with her friend, then I could have sent home the one I liked the least.” Here he laughed. “That’s all I need, right? Two bad girls on my hands.” He wagged his finger at her. “Bad girl, bad girl,” he said, laughing. “Very bad girl.”
Commander Ga produced his camera. “If she’s going to get cleaned up and fitted for a choson-ot,” he said, “I’ll need to get a ‘before’ photo.” He neared her and squatted low to snap the picture. “And maybe an action shot,” he announced, “of how our guest has documented the amassed knowledge of our glorious leader Kim Jong Il.”
He nodded to her. “Now hold up the book.”
Commander Ga was squinting to make sure everything fit perfectly, the woman and her book, the note to Wanda—everything had to be in focus—when he saw through the viewfinder that the Dear Leader was crouching down and squeezing into the frame, his hand pulling her close by her shoulder. Ga stared at the strange and dangerous image before him and decided it was right that cameras were illegal.
“Tell her to smile,” the Dear Leader said.
“Can you smile?” he asked.
She smiled.
“The truth is,” Ga said, his finger on the button, “that eventually everyone goes away.”
That these words should come from the lips of Commander Ga made the Dear Leader grin. “Isn’t that the truth of it,” he responded.
In English, Ga said, “Say ‘Cheese.’ ”
And then the Dear Leader and his dear rower were blinking together from the flash.
“I want copies of those,” the Dear Leader said, straining to get back to his feet.