18. Due East
DUE EAST
RI
It was necessary, and essential, that she tour the country and make an overall security assessment of Joseon. By eight the next morning, the government van was waiting outside the chancery.
He braced himself for seeing her. The government was always watching, and as a guilty transgressor, he had to keep his outward appearance neutral.
He couldn’t wait to see her.
Ri stood beside the van with Mr. Choe, watching the other members of the European delegation emerge with packed doshirak lunches, and the single Pelican case that he knew Marina guarded vigilantly. The radio frequency detector.
Their itinerary would take them due east, to the seaside: roads, tunnels, rail connections, hospitals, checkpoints.
The official purpose was to determine whether diplomatic personnel could move safely through Joseon outside Pyongyang.
Wonsan was Joseon’s showcase beach. The government wanted a European delegation to take weekends there, spending foreign currency.
The unofficial purpose, as far as Ri could tell, was to make sure they never moved anywhere alone.
Marina came down the steps last.
His eyes went to her automatically.
Hers found him just as quickly.
The soft morning sun shimmered off her brunette hair, and he was transported back to the first sight of her: red, gold, and flashes of night-black like the feathers of a mythical phoenix.
He bowed when she got into the van, and she ducked her head, doing the same. Nothing about her told the love story they’d written.
He looked away quickly to keep the longing off his face.
Miss Wu climbed in last, and shut the sliding door of the van behind her.
Miss Park was beside her. Ri was up front—Mr. Choe was driving.
A police representative stood beside them, waiting to check the mileage and fuel, then sign off on their departure.
Two more officials were already discussing the day's itinerary within earshot: three hours east. Tour of the local cities around Wonsan.
Return back to Pyongyang three days hence, by dark.
Mr. Choe looked over at him: “If you don’t mind, I prefer to drive up front, alone.”
He looked back at Miss Wu and Miss Park, and glided his eyes over Marina but tried not to take her in. “Very well.”
Miss Park got up, bent over in the van, and squeezed back to the third row. Ri got out and got back in, sliding the door behind him like a vault. Marina was watching him—he wished she’d look away.
He sat down in the seat next to her, on eggshells. Mr. Choe checked the rearview, looking at everyone.
Were they onto him? Was this a test?
He took a deep breath, and to his horror his breath shuddered with the squeezing of his chest. So he closed his eyes like he was desperate to take a nap, and stayed that way as Mr. Choe started the engine and wound them through the start-and-stop streets of the capital.
By the time Pyongyang disappeared behind them, the buildings giving way to fields and mountains, he understood exactly what the next several days were going to be like.
But there were no SCIFs anywhere else. All hotel rooms were bugged.
They were back in the mold that North Korea forced them into.
She stopped rubbing her knees absently: the carpet burn was healing on her, just like it had on him.
It was worse than breaking up and seeing one’s ex everywhere. Because they weren’t broken up, they wanted to be together, but the government tore them apart.
He’d had decades of keeping his thoughts of his face, an advantage he had not fully appreciated until he saw her own, maudlin-tinged, every single day.
The more neutral his face looked, the worse she looked.
Finally, for her safety, he relented and looked longingly in her direction a few times, only when she was looking.
He marvelled at it. He was so accustomed to hiding any real emotions that even sadness had to be called forth. But she showed it freely. She felt it whenever.
She had the freedom to feel.
He realized this was one of the dangers of foreign contact: to realize what everyone in the country was denied by dint of birthplace.
They were driving down a lane when she pointed out a rainbow, somewhere off in the horizon.
“I love rainbows,” she said quietly.
He stared at her, open-mouthed.
She’d said love.
Not like, or appreciate or even enjoy. Those were the words he’d grown up with. Even with family, they said like to one another. I like you, Papa. I like you too, son.
Love was restricted. It was only appropriate to use in terms of the leaders.
Except Marina, who didn’t like, appreciate or enjoy rainbows. She loved them.
He watched her: the sunlight reflecting off her brown hair, her expressive eyes. Her confidence. Her love. And it took his breath away how she was going to crater his life when she left.
She caught him staring, and asked: “Don’t you love rainbows too?”
He nodded. “I do,” he said softly, thinking he’d said it just for her.
But as they drove down the gravel road, he realized that it was for him, really. To finally love something other than Kim Jong-un. Whom in his secret heart, he didn’t love at all. No one did.
He shared a room with a rotating cast of other male government officials. There was a forensic expert from Pyongyang. A medical doctor from Kaesong. A local guide from the coastal mountains. Their combined presence prevented any semblance of privacy or freedom.
Joseon was back with a vengeance.
He was no longer in the SCIF on Embassy Row in Pyongyang.
Instead, it was like a tidal wave had struck.
The government unfurled into every room or every building, every street and every open space outside.
Secret police hovering and watching them.
Leadership portraits of the dead Marshals wherever one turned.
Every citizen a witness, every person an informant on the government’s roll.
He lay awake at night, listening to the lazy buzz of a mosquito hovering around their room.
He would listen to the regular breathing of the doctor.
The soft snore of the mountain guide. He lay awake when they were asleep.
It was unthinkable to try to get out of his room and go to hers. The consequences were unbearable.
And yet something else unthinkable began to form in his head: that he had met the love of his life, and she loved him back.
That he’d met his wife even if the government didn’t agree with that conclusion.
That he’d find a way out because he disagreed with theirs.