15. Trust But Verify
TRUST BUT VERIFY
Vice Minister Jung needed information. So after the self-criticism session yesterday, he told Gyeong-ok to send him there alone, without Miss Wu and Miss Park.
How would that help gather information? Ri had asked, fear rising in his throat at what he’d do—and what he’d forget—if he were alone with her.
Use your wiles, the vice minister had said, and glanced at Gyeong-ok.
Gyeong-ok kept her face impassive, noting down the instructions on a tiny notepad she carried.
Which was how he found himself leaving Miss Wu and Miss Park at the Ministry building and bicycling over to the Embassy Row, which was not well-served buy public transportation.
There was no possibility of him taking a sedan over, alone, what with the fuel rations as they were.
She found him outside, waiting—and swearing—patiently by his bike.
“Oh, for goodness sake, come inside,” she said airily. Not a care in the world.
“Are you sure?”
He mopped his face.
“I’m sure. You’re going to become a heat casualty any minute now, and then it will be a security problem. Come inside.”
He signed in at the guard’s desk and the guard gave him a suspicious look, but he said that he was here alone on the vice minister’s bidding.
The guard grunted, looking between him and Marina. The guard searched his phone by hand, their X-ray machine was not working yet. In the process, his eyes said he’d figured out what Seung-chol was sent there to do.
To use his wiles.
He was not going to use any such wiles. It was extraordinarily dangerous to do so. Their kiss had transformed him into kindling and her into fire—just one spark would set it off.
Marina pretended not to notice the exchange.
She pointed him to the men’s room with water, soap, and working plumbing. He cleaned himself up and she was still waiting outside.
He stepped out, drying the last bit of water on his hands by smoothing over his hair—a long habit from having no towels.
Her lips parted at the movement.
He stopped, just for a moment, and flushed.
“Come on, I have work to do,” she said.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket while he was taking in a building with no portraits of the Kim family.
“Yes, Esmee, the security cameras are working… yes, he’s here.” She hung up.
“Am I causing you any trouble?” he asked.
“No trouble at all.”
“You’re telling me this room is one-hundred percent clean? No bugs?”
“Yes.” Ri compressed his lips. They’d been over this at least ten times, and it wasn’t yet three in the afternoon. “We’re not… listening,” he said the last word delicately. “We want your trust, and for the mission to re-establish here in Pyongyang.”
She set down a white plastic device, and plugged it in. A digital clock flashed on and off, and beside it an image of a quarter-moon. It was a combination clock-white noise device intended for sleeping, he registered.
“You need an alarm clock so as not to sleep through meetings?” he asked, unable to resist.
She scoffed, and picked up a handheld radio frequency detector, used to detect surveillance devices. It was a Sensitive Compartmentalized Information Facility, a SCIF.
“Is that really necessary?” he asked.
“Trust, but verify—isn’t that the motto?”
He inclined his head and she ushered him out, then closed the door.
There was a chair outside the SCIF. He sat down and waited. Her phone was on the desk next to the SCIF entry, which was proper. No cell phones could be in the room, they would throw off the search for bugs.
He heard her checking the room. Opening cupboards, drawer, moving desks and chairs on rollers. He heard what sounded like a vacuum cleaner—she had turned on the white noise maker, he realized. He checked his watch: it was a quarter after three.
There was something extraordinary about the anteroom outside the SCIF.
He was alone.
Even more extraordinarily, with permission. With the express instructions from the state to go spend some time alone with her.
Marina was sweeping the room, and her RF detector found what he knew to be true: there were no microphones. Nothing. The white-noise machine was running.
It was the first time he’d entered a foreign mission and truly felt he’d left a fragment of Joseon behind him.
There were no portraits.
No microphones.
No witnesses.
He leaned back in his chair, considering what he’d do with this unheard-of lack of supervision.
He closed his eyes and, unbidden, her face was in his hands, her body was pressed up to his.
He opened his eyes. No. He shouldn’t. It was ten to four. Almost quitting time. He just had to sit another hour and his workday would end harmlessly.
But the anteroom was empty. The hallway outside was lit with fluorescent lights, not just sunlight.
It wasn’t like anywhere else that he’d ever been before.
He unpinned his red flag lapel pin with the Respected Grand Marshal on it, and no one came running. He stared at it in his palm. He stood up and paced, and caught sight of himself in the reflection on the glass.
It was just him in a white shirt.
The state was not pinned to him anymore.
There was one thing, actually, that he wanted to do. Just for himself. Go talk to her, and talk to her about that night.
Before he could reconsider, he knocked softly on the door.
“Yes?”
He figured that was an invitation to open it, so he did.
He froze in the doorway.
He dropped his phone.
She was stark naked. Undressed. Completely nude.
“I am—I am sorry,” he stammered, dropping his eyes and backing out of the room. But not leaving it—no, not yet. Besides, he was too busy committing that half second glimpse to memory.
She shrugged—in his peripheral vision. He knew that he should, by policy, have his eyes shut tightly but he was still human.
“I was just checking,” she said.
“What?” He looked up.
Still naked.
He clapped his hand over his eyes. At the same time he stepped backwards and felt the contours of his phone underfoot. He crouched, peeled his hand away just enough to look down and retrieve it.
“If the room was bugged. Figured I’d run a practical test.”
“Presumably you were checking for video surveillance, not audio,” he said.
She chuckled. “Right. And sorry if I shocked you. I am European. Nakedness is natural to us.”
He heard the rustle of clothing. She was getting dressed.
“It’s fine,” he said automatically.
“Then look,” she said.
He lowered his hand and lifted his eyes. He let out a breath that he hadn’t known that he was holding; harsh, low. She was a vision.
“Did we just discover the one unsurveilled space in Joseon?” she asked, calling his country by its colloquial name. Using the word that he used. A rapprochement.
He stepped back, closing the door behind him with his back. Facing her. “We did.”
“Are you… interested in running a practical test?” Her eyes dropped to his waistline, and back to meet his own.
He unbuttoned his shirt in answer, and her eyes darkened.
She crossed the space between them, unhurried, like she had all the time in the world when the building would bar its doors at five. Curfew would start at eight.
There was always a clock, and it was always counting down.
"Yes?" she asked, tipping her head toward the door he was still braced against. "We’re alone?"
He blinked. It had been so long since he’d lived without consequences, without calculations. A risk analysis and a ticking clock were second nature. Without them, he felt like the clouds had rolled away and he was seeing the sky for the first time.
She reached for him, but her hand moved beside him. He glanced down and saw her twist the turn-lock in the door handle, then look back up at him interrogatively.
She was inches from him, her skin a warm shade of the likes he’d never seen before, up close.
But most importantly, it was hers.
"We're alone." His voice was rough. He’d been trained from infancy to not trust foreigners. To give them a wide berth. Which was why, he supposed, he had not closed the distance yet.
She reached up and finished what his hands had started, and he let her. Feeling his shirt loosen, her palms warm on his shoulders as she pushed his shirt open.
“Are you sure you want this?” she asked quietly, her fingers resting on his belt.
He pulled her to him and kissed her. He was sure.
His hand went to the back of her neck, removing her hair tie. She reached beside him and snapped off the light. They were plunged into darkness, with no windows in a SCIF. His eyes adjusted and a crevice of faint light crept in from under the door.
There was no bed here, despite, he realized, the practicality in having one in a SCIF in Joseon. When they lowered to the floor, he pulled off his shirt and laid it out for her.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered in her ear. “I wish we could do this… comfortably.”
She bit lightly the junction of his neck and shoulder, sending goosebumps everywhere. “This is the only place I’m comfortable with it.”
She surprised him when she reached for her pants, laying beside them on the floor, and produced a thin plastic packet. Another law broken: she had brought contraceptives into Joseon.
He grinned, rolling himself underneath her. She was carrying condoms with her while she was with him. She’d planned for this. She wanted him too.
He'd spent his life learning the lines. Which streets to go on. Which people to be around. Which words to say.
Line after line after line.
Her arms were around him and he crossed over each one with her.
Joseon still existed outside the walls of the room. But inside them, it had vanished. By the time she sank down on him, sealing them together, he’d crossed the border between them: into freedom, that he knew she carried with her.
He buried his nose into her neck, inhaling her scent. Her hair brushed his cheek. Her skin felt like silk.
“Marina,” he whispered into her ear, and she shivered.
For the first time in memory, he wanted to be nowhere else.