She was born an irredeemable slave inside Labor Camp 14, her blood tainted by the crimes of her mother. Its fenced boundaries stretched fifty kilometers north to south, half that east to west, the electrified barbed wire dotted with guard towers and patrolled around the clock. No one went anywhere near the fences. The punishment was instant death, either from the electricity or from bullets. She learned later that there were many camps scattered in the North Korean mountains. Hers, in South Pyongan province, confined over 15,000 people. More than ten times that many filled the rest.
Camp rules were taught from birth. Never escape. No more than two prisoners may meet together. Do not steal. Guards should be obeyed. Anything suspicious must be reported. Prisoners shall work every day. The sexes remain apart. All errors are to be repented. And violators of any rule will be instantly shot.
For nearly half of her life she wore stinking rags, stiff as a board from dirt and grime. No soap, socks, gloves, or undergarments were ever available. She and her mother worked fifteen hours a day at forced labor, and would until the day they died. Malnutrition was the main cause of death, but execution ran a close second. The law had been proclaimed in the 1950s by the first Kim. Enemies of class, whoever they are, their seed must be eliminated through three generations. The world outside the fences knew nothing of what went on inside. No one cared. Prisoners were forgotten.
But what had her mother done?
Finally, at age eight, she’d asked.
“My sin was falling in love.”
A strange reply, one her mother never elaborated upon.
Together they occupied one room with only a table and two chairs, sharing a kitchen with dozens of others. There was no running water, no bath, and only a communal privy. The windows were gray vinyl that allowed in little light and plenty of weather. Insects swarmed in the summer and the air continually stank of excrement and rot. An allocation of coal, mined by prisoners, provided some winter heat since it was deemed counterproductive to kill too many prisoners at once.
“I’m here,” she said to her mother, “because you fell in love?”
There had to be more.
But her mother still offered nothing.
The guards taught them that the sins of their parents could only be erased with hard work, obedience, and informing on others. Redemption came from snitching. Tell on rule breakers and you received a few grains of rice. Report a violation and you’d be allowed time to soak in the river.
She came to resent her mother.
Then to hate her. With an all-consuming rage.
She flushed those troubling thoughts from her brain.
Sleep seemed to be finally arriving. The hour was late and she needed rest. Tomorrow could prove decisive. She’d long hoped that her father was different from the other Kims. He liked to say that was the case. The first two had ruled with great cruelty. He should have been next, but he squandered his opportunity. He’d been right in what he said beside Larks’ bed. She had witnessed the strong dominate the weak. Every day, until age nine, she worked clearing snow, chopping trees, or shoveling coal. She’d particularly hated cleaning privies—chipping out frozen feces and carrying the clumps with her bare hands to the fields. Early in life she learned to stand straight and bow to the guards, never looking them in the eye. She spent her days finding fault in herself. How many times had she watched newborns clubbed to death with iron rods? The spectacle had been periodically arranged to discourage prisoners from multiplying. After all, the whole idea was to cleanse three generations of incorrect thinkers, not allow another to be born.
In the camp there’d been two classes. Those born there, Insiders, and those sentenced there, Outsiders. The main difference was that Outsiders knew what lay beyond the fences and Insiders had no idea. That knowledge made Outsiders weak. Their will to live disappeared quickly. To Insiders, not knowing about the world actually became an advantage. For them, licking spilled soup from the floor seemed okay. Begging was simply a way of life, betraying a friend just part of surviving. Their own guilt, shame, and failure was what dominated their thinking. Unfortunately for Outsiders, they remained paralyzed with shock, revulsion, and despair.
And while her life had unfolded behind those fences, hidden from the world, she now knew that Kims had lived as princes, wanting for nothing. Her father proclaimed himself on a mission of redemption. But she wondered what would happen when he achieved that goal. What would he do when power was finally in his hands?
She’d read what her father had written about the day his father disowned him. Whether any of it was true, she did not know. Deceit seemed a Kim family trait. In the camp she’d been taught little about the country’s leaders. Only after her release had she learned more, most of it troubling. In the camp the guards had been her sole authority. They taught her what and how to think, when and what to say. So silence became her friend.
Along with truth.
And where before, as a prisoner, she was nothing, now the choices in life were hers.
Which brought her comfort.
And sleep.
FOURTEEN
WASHINGTON, DC
10:58 P.M.
Stephanie was familiar with this United States courthouse. It sat in Judiciary Square, facing south toward Constitution Avenue and the Mall. Nothing about its exterior was noteworthy, the style bland and institutionalized, common to the 1950s when it was built.
She and Harriett Engle had flown from Georgia on the same Department of Justice jet that had brought the attorney general south. It had been waiting for them at an airfield north of Atlanta, not far from Stephanie’s house. Originally, the plan had been to flush out Treasury, then deal with things tomorrow after Cotton reported back about both the money transfer and Larks. But all of that changed with the call to the secretary of Treasury. Things became further complicated after Luke Daniels’ report, which came during the flight. The twenty million dollars was destroyed and all participants to the transaction were dead.