FIFTY
Hana liked the fact that her father depended on her. In that he was different from her mother. The camp forced both isolation and independence. No one could really care for anyone else. Sun Hi’s death proved that reality. Her mother had repeatedly given herself to the guards, thinking they would take care of her. But she’d been wrong. No mercy had ever been thrown her way. Guards cared nothing for prisoners. They were mere pieces of property to do with as they pleased.
By the time her father found her she was working in the factory every day. Her body had developed enough to attract the guards’ attention, and it would have been only a matter of time before one of them had taken her. But she’d already decided that whoever that might be would pay a heavy price. Unlike her mother, she would kill or maim him and take whatever punishment came, which would have surely been death.
But she’d been spared that ordeal.
Once identified as a Kim she’d been treated for the first time as a person. The fear on the guards’ faces that day when her father claimed her had been pleasing. Watching Teacher die had satisfied her even more. It had taken nearly an hour, but he finally succumbed. Afterward, she asked that he be cut down and left to lie on the filthy floor until the day ended.
Just like Sun Hi.
“You have a cold heart,” her father said to her.
“I have no heart.”
He gently laid a hand on her shoulder. She hated being touched, but knew better than to repel the gesture.
“Your time here is over,” he said. “Life will be different.”
But she knew that was not true. Though she may be leaving the camp, the camp would never leave her.
She was a product of its evil.
As impossible to change as the camp rules.
She left the hotel suite for a second time and headed back down to the lobby. Her father had listened carefully as she explained what she wanted him to do. He’d assured her that he would follow her directions. She was reasonably certain that the two men she’d spotted had no idea of her identity. They hadn’t seen her earlier, of that she was sure, and she told herself to make sure that they did not see her now.
The Hotel Korcula was a renovated mammoth with walls of swirling marble, gilded details, and wood-paneled elevators. She’d explored its upscale restaurant and surveyed what was described as the Emerald Ballroom. The lobby was spacious, dominated by three large aquariums full of colorful fish and swaying plants. She stepped off the elevator and avoided the main reception area, turning right and walking down a short corridor to where the restrooms were located. She entered the ladies’ room and saw that the space was empty. The bathroom facilities were as upscale and elegant as the rest of the hotel. Three marble sinks lined the stone counter before a long mirror. She stood before one of the sinks, washed away her anxiety with some cold water, and waited.
*
Kim had checked. The train east from Zadar to Knin was an evening express with only four stops. Two just outside Zadar, and the next to last in Solaris, about twenty miles from the end of the line in Knin. The trip should take less than two hours. He had no choice but to go. He needed to understand everything and Howell was the fastest way to accomplish that goal. He was carrying the black satchel and their travel bag. He was trusting Hana to make their escape possible, though he was still concerned about who had been able to locate him so fast. It had to be his half brother. Who else? And the fact that he’d been found only added to the sense of urgency. Before he could formulate the final stages of his miraculous comeback, he had to secure whatever there was to find and learn whatever there was to know. To accomplish that, he had to outsmart his opponent.
He rode the elevator down, stepped off on the ground floor, and turned left. He entered the lobby and marched past the aquariums, his eyes noticing the two men Hana had described. Both were clean-shaven Europeans, dark-haired, dressed in long coats. Neither concealed their interest in him, immediately stepping his way.
He stopped, made a parade-ground turn, and walked back down the short corridor to the elevators, turning right as Hana had instructed. No need to glance back. He knew they were coming. Double doors for what was labeled THE EMERALD BALLROOM were visible ahead and he kept his course straight for them.
“Stop,” a male voice said behind him in English.
He kept walking.
“I told you to stop,” the voice said again.
He entered the ballroom, a cavernous, carpeted hall with a towering ceiling decorated by whirls of plaster. No one was inside, the chairs surrounding the bare tables empty, the only light coming from a few incandescent fixtures that kept the place from becoming a cave. Hana had described the interior perfectly. He heard the double doors open, then close behind him.
“Halt,” the voice said.
He stopped and turned.
The two Coats blocked his way out.
They stepped closer.
One of them produced a gun and said, “We’ll take that black satchel.”
“I do wonder, did Pyongyang send you?”
Before either man could reply, both shrieked in agony and lurched forward, arms reaching back over their shoulders. One of the men turned, but never made it all the way. Both collapsed to the carpet, revealing Hana standing behind them, each hand gripping a syringe, thumb on the plunger. She’d waited in the restroom down the hall until he’d lured the men here, carefully making her way inside and taking them down with the same sedative used on Larks and Malone.
Unlike his other children, who’d become traitors, this one was a joy to behold.