He shrugged. “There is nothing I can do for them, and I doubt they would want me to. None of them stayed loyal, except you.”
Because she’d had no choice. She was barely ten when her father was disgraced, still unaccustomed to the world beyond the fences. So when he chose to leave the country, she’d had no choice but to follow. True, as she grew older she could have left, but she had no desire to return to North Korea. She hated anything and everything associated with that place. Only once had she gone back, on a personal errand her father arranged, there for only a day. It happened ten years after she’d fled the camp. She was nineteen, fully recovered from years of malnutrition, and had wanted to see her mother. Her father secured permission and she’d reentered the camp that day inside a limousine, the superintendent there to personally greet her. Neither of them spoke of the past. She was taken directly to her mother, who was now working in the pottery factory, her days in the fields obviously over.
Her mother appeared weaker than she recalled, still wearing the same filthy sack-like clothes that stank of sweat, slime, and blood. And while her own hair had grown long and thick and her body had blossomed—the gaunt hollowness and pale skin no longer there—her mother had shrunk further. Most of the teeth were gone, the eyes sunk deep from lack of food, a prelude she knew to more serious problems.
“I thought you were dead,” her mother said. “I was told nothing. So I assumed you were gone.” The words were delivered with the flat lack of emotion she so vividly recalled.
“My father came for me.”
A look of surprise appeared on the tired face, which was exactly what she’d come to see.
“And he did not save me?”
“Why would he?”
And she meant it.
She still wanted an answer to the question she’d asked so many times. Why was I a prisoner? Her father had told her about the love affair and how his father had disapproved, her mother sent to the camp, no one at the time knowing she was pregnant.
“Because he loved me,” her mother said with a sadness in her voice. “I was a great beauty, full of life and excitement.” Then a coldness returned to her eyes. “I never told you why we were here, because I never wanted you to know of him.”
A curious answer, which compelled her to ask, “Why would you do that?”
“He sent me here.”
“That’s a lie.” The swiftness of her rebuttal surprised her.
“What did he tell you? That his father sent me here?” Her mother laughed. “You’re so foolish. You were always foolish. He sent me here. He wanted me gone. He enjoyed what he wanted from me then, when he tired of me, I was sent here to disappear.”
She’d never believed much of what this woman said. The camp forced prisoners to remain enemies, constantly distrusting one another. But the angry look in the sad eyes that stared back—which for the first time she could recall seemed to convey true pain—said her mother was telling the truth.
“He is a ruthless man. Never forget that. Don’t be fooled. He is as what came before him. You stand here in your fine clothes, your belly full, smug in your freedom. But you are not free. He is Kim. They have no loyalty beyond themselves.”
Her mother spit in her face.
“And you are Kim.”
Those were the last words they ever spoke. Since no semblance of anything resembling love had ever passed between them, she hadn’t given the woman another thought. She learned a year later that her mother was dead, caught trying to escape. How many times had she witnessed such teachable moments, as the guards described executions.
She could easily imagine her mother’s fate.
A wooden pole would be pounded into the hard earth. Prisoners would assemble, the only time more than two were allowed to gather. One of the guards would shout at how the ungrateful bitch had been offered redemption through hard work, yet rejected the generosity shown. To prevent any rebuttal, her mother’s mouth would have been stuffed full of pebbles, her head sheathed with a hood. Then she would be tied to the pole, shot, her body heaved into a cart for disposal in one of the mass graves, the occupants’ identities as meaningless in death as in life.
But she’d never forgotten what her mother told her that final day.
He sent me here.
She watched her father as he read more of the documents from the black satchel. Who were those men at the hotel? Why had they come? They had to be from Pyongyang. Who else would care? The Americans? Possibly. She was sure no one had followed them from the hotel and they’d made it onto the train with no incidents. But something told her they were not alone. There was danger here.
“I’m going to check the train,” she said.
Her father glanced up from his reading. “I think that is an excellent idea.”
Before she could rise the door to the compartment slid open and she saw a man. Mid-thirties, sparse hair, slight build. She knew the face.
Anan Wayne Howell.
“Where is Jelena?” Howell asked.
“Nearby,” her father said. “Once we have our chat, you may have her.”
But she knew that was a lie. Howell would most likely end up dead, too. How many more would die? Fifty? A hundred? Ten thousand? Millions? The fact that she could not say with any certainty was proof enough that her father was indeed Kim.
“Sit down,” he said to Howell. “My daughter was just leaving.”
She rose and stepped out into the narrow corridor. Howell allowed her to pass, then entered the compartment.
She slid the door closed.
It seemed that with every word she became more distant. Her father lied with such ease. Nothing about his tone or countenance changed, whether his words be truth or fiction.
So nothing he said could be believed.
Even more proof that he was Kim.
*
Isabella had followed Howell through the train. He was searching. She watched through the window in the far exit door, which offered a view into the next car, as Howell apparently found what he sought, disappearing into one of the first-class compartments.
A young woman appeared in the hallway.