34. Dangerous Waters
DANGEROUS WATERS
RI
The neighborhood watchman, the inminban, came shortly after ten, like clockwork. This was the way it was all over the country, for everyone: they called it being tucked in at night before bed.
A knock, a face at the door, sometimes a question about the day. Sometimes nothing more than a glance inside and the small acknowledgment that Comrade Ri Sung-cheol was where Comrade Ri Sung-cheol was supposed to be.
Tonight, he was not going to stay there.
Ri opened the door before the woman could knock twice.
She looked mildly surprised. “That was quick.”
“I forgot something at the Ministry.”
Her expression changed immediately.
“What?”
“A file.”
“At this hour?”
Ri bent to pull on his shoes.
“I must take care of it now.”
The woman looked over his shoulder into the apartment, as though the file might somehow be visible from the doorway.
“You’re walking?”
“There are no cars, and my bike was stolen last month.”
That answer seemed to satisfy her more than anything else had. Pyongyang belonged to pedestrians.
He stepped into the corridor and locked the door behind him.
The inminban moved aside: “Don’t be long.”
Ri smiled. “I never am.”
The city had gone black.
Not completely. It never did. Here and there a government building remained illuminated, or a lamp burned outside some institution deemed important enough to receive electricity after the residential blocks went dark.
The brightest part os the city was the train station, and the brightest part of the train station were the two leader portraits, the old men lit up and grinning in perpetuity.
The inhabitants of Pyongyang had vanished off the streets. They had melted away hours ago as the light faded, old habits left over from living with sudden impositions of curfews or martial law.
Ri walked through it alone. His breathing loud. His footsteps even louder. Two bicycles squeaked somewhere in the distance—most likely an inminban and her assistant, or the police.
He had spent his entire life moving through this city. He knew where the pavement buckled, where streets widened, where darkness collected beneath trees. He knew which buildings would still have guards outside and which intersections might have police.
Tonight every familiar corner looked different. He watched them on borrowed time. There was always a clock counting down in Joseon. Tonight was the last night of his life.
He walked, certain, but not scrambling through the city. As someone who had forgotten a Ministry file did not run through Pyongyang.
He walked past darkened apartment blocks. A tram line casting long spidery shadows over the road. Buildings whose windows reflected nothing at all.
His heart hammered harder with every step.
Thoughts of his apartment, his Ministry desk. His parents. The mountains beyond the city where he’d never once been permitted to venture.
The image of Marina first walking towards him while he waited outside the chancery.
Everything he had ever known was here. He could still turn around. He let his feet decide, without pressure, without forcing them to do one or the other.
His feet led him forward.
They led him towards her.
The buildings grew more distant, and the a cool breeze off the surface of the river. The Taedong appeared through the darkness ahead, winding its way through the Pyongyang streets.
Ri slowed.
Somewhere across the river, a scattering of lights remained visible. Nearer to him were the low industrial shapes beside the water, barely distinguishable from the night.
He checked the road.
Nothing.
He stepped off it.
Gravel shifted beneath his shoes.
He moved farther toward the embankment.
His mouth had gone dry.
This was the part that had seemed simple when they discussed it.
Make noise. Disappear. Let everyone else decide what had happened.
Ri looked back over his shoulder, and then he watched his step, let himself slide down a controlled skid down the embankment, and cried out. It ripped out of his throat as though the ground had vanished beneath him.
He saw more loose stones and kicked them down the embankment.
They cascaded downward, striking one another. A noisy scattering of rock splashed into the water.
Ri dropped immediately into the darkness and moved quickly now, crouching low and following the route he had memorized.
Behind him, a light appeared.
Then one more.
A window lit up in an apartment block.
The sound of a doorway opening somewhere behind him.
Someone called out.
Ri didn't look back, just forward. Marina had told him he’d find a bicycle under the next bridge. For one terrible second he couldn't see it. Then his hand struck the handlebars. He nearly laughed. Instead, he swung onto it and pushed away. The soft sound of gravel underneath under the tires.
He pedaled through the darkness, just a person out late, now. He had to avoid the police and the night watchmen inminban, who would aks him for ID, and his fake drowning would be for naught. His legs felt impossibly weak.
Behind him, more lights were coming on near the river.
They would find the disturbed stones.
They would find no Ri Sung-cheol.
Soon someone would reach the water.
Someone would call the police.
Someone would eventually call the Ministry.
And sometime after that, somebody would knock on the door of his apartment and discover that he had not come back.
He pedaled harder.
The warehouse looked abandoned because it nearly was.
One side of the roof sagged. Several windows were broken. An old loading area opened toward the road, half swallowed by weeds and darkness.
Ri saw no car. His stomach dropped.
Then something flashed once from inside. A light, gone immediately.
He turned the bicycle off the road. The tires ground over debris. He jumped off before reaching the building and let the bicycle fall beside the wall. The sound seemed enormous. A door opened inside.
Ri froze.
Esmee’s face appeared in the wing mirror. The trunk opened. For the first time that night, he hesitated. It was absurd. Of all the things he had just done, this was where his body decided to protest. Marina didn’t fully trust Esmee, so he didn’t either.
Esmee looked at him in the rearview mirror, and shrugged. It was now or never. The brake lights lit up, and she turned on the engine. A hot blast of exhaust hit his shin.
Damnit, she was going to drive off without him.
Ri clambered over the rear bumper into the trunk’s cavity and pulled down the trunk over him. It shut with a click, the metal enclosing him into complete darkness. He curled into a blanket and pulled it over him.
There was something cold and metallic next to him next to him–what, he didn’t know. He took out his phone and turned on the flashlight—it was a tire iron.
He heard her step out, and open the rear passenger door. For the second time, his stomach dropped.
She pulled up the seat lock and yanked the back seats—he breathed in the cooler air of the car.
“Give me your phone.”
He frowned, handing it over to her reluctantly.
She locked the seats back, and darkness swallowed him again. She got back into the car and pulled out.
Within minutes he felt the road change underneath him—they were over the bridge where the bike had been hidden.
She slowed down, lowered the window and he heard movement, a splash. His phone, in the water.
“Bloody amateur,” Esmee said loudly enough for him to hear.