Joy Brigade (2 page)

Captain Skander roared in protest, but the North Korean officer ignored him.

After Zarkos had been hauled ashore, the Korean officer, puffing serenely on his cigarette, stepped in front of the sailors. “My name is Commander Koh,” he said in Korean. A young Korean soldier translated. “Welcome to paradise!”

The Albanian sailors shifted their weight, hunched their shoulders, and glanced surreptitiously at one another. None of them laughed, a tribute to their long experience of living under Communist regime.

“Our country is paradise,” Commander Koh continued, “because our Great Leader, the shining light of our people, hero of the Korean War, and fearless general of our invincible forces, provides us with all our wants and needs. You are fortunate to be here, in this land of plenty, even if it is for only these few short days.” Commander Koh paused, took a last drag on his cigarette, and flicked it overboard. “Your ship has passed inspection. All except the man who’s been taken ashore. He will be competently dealt with. The rest of you will be guests of our Great Leader tonight in the People’s Hall of International Friendship. Due to the open heart and generous spirit of our Great Leader, entertainment will be provided.”

Below us, Zarkos had somehow broken free from his captors. He struggled toward the gangplank, but his dash for freedom was cut short by an alert soldier’s swift kick to the groin. Zarkos curled into a ball, rolling on the deck and moaning in pain. His body convulsed and he vomited onto the splintered planks.

“The entertainment begins at eighteen hundred hours,” Commander Koh continued, ignoring the performance below. “You will not be late.” Then he turned away, adding,
“Kutna.”
Finished. The entire armed boarding party retreated down the gangplank.

Captain Skander stared helplessly as Zarkos was dragged away. When the groaning sailor disappeared from view, the captain turned and spoke to the men in a somber tone.

Later, Mergim explained that Captain Skander believed that the bastard North Koreans only wanted money. It was routine with them. The North Koreans would negotiate a deal with the Albanian shipping cooperative and the contract would be signed, but all along the North Koreans would consider the price too low and make plans to extort more money to bring the contract up to a level they thought appropriate. Captain Skander assured the crew that the shipping cooperative would come up with the money and Zarkos would be freed and back aboard before the
Star of Tirana
left Nampo.

Grumbling, the sailors returned to their duties.

Mergim agreed with Captain Skander’s analysis. For one thing, the powder that the North Koreans called antler horn was too finely ground to be a natural product from Siberian caribou. “Customers want chunks,” Mergim explained, “to see what they’re buying. Then they grind it down themselves. That stuff in those packages is some other kind of powder, not real antler horn.” Then Mergim added, “The red-star jokers want to show us who’s boss. Every time I come here, they push sailors. Push too hard sometimes.”

After he left, I stood at the railing alone, holding my hands in front of me to make sure the quivering had stopped. Then I went below to help with the cargo.

“She’s a hot number,” Mergim said, leering.

There was only one woman in the People’s Hall of International Friendship who was less than geriatric, and most of the sailors were watching her each and every
movement. She was a slightly portly young woman, probably in her mid- to late-twenties, with thick legs and sturdy hips. Ample breasts were pressed tightly beneath a high-necked red cotton dress and a full-length white apron, her straight black hair held in place by a matching bandanna.

I’d already noticed that the other Korean workers called her Pei. Food Worker Pei. I hadn’t let on that I understood, of course. To have done so would have brought attention to myself that could have proven more than just embarrassing. It could have proven fatal.

The other workers in the People’s Hall were either frail older men who scurried about in the back galley or grandmotherly types who wore the same uniform as Food Worker Pei but didn’t fill them out nearly as voluptuously. We’d all been at sea a long time and none of us could take our eyes off her.

“She wears rubber gloves,” Mergim told me.

“Huh?” I sipped on my hot barley tea and set it down. “Rubber gloves? What do you mean?”

“She’s not wearing them now,” he said.

We watched as Food Worker Pei slid a platter of stainless-steel soup bowls onto the center of a round table of Albanian sailors. Showing complete egalitarianism, the sailors were required to pick up their own bowls, along with the spoons and the wooden chopsticks and the plates piled high with brown rice. Once the platter was empty, Pei hoisted it back up, swiveled, and sashayed back to the kitchen.

“Later,” Mergim continued, “when the old women are cleaning up, then she wait in front hallway.”

“Waits for what?”

Mergim grinned. “For rubber glove treatment.” In short strokes, he pumped his fist up and down.

My eyes widened. “You’re serious.”

“Of course, I’m serious.” Mergim puffed on his cigarette, looking slightly offended.

I glanced at the armed men guarding the three exits. “What about the guards?”

“They smoke outside. Don’t look. Probably they get money too.”

The People’s Hall of International Friendship was not like the fleshpots of the Orient one reads about. It was fenced in, about a hundred square yards, with an outside patio that could be used in good weather and a large dining hall where most of the sailors ate their evening meals while in port. There was no menu. Whatever was served was served, take it or leave it. The menu du jour was a dish I recognized from my years in the South,
komtang
. Sliced beef with onion and egg in a hot broth. No pork—the Koreans had assured us that no pig product would be used since they knew that most of the Albanian sailors were Muslims. Not that the Communist governments of either country approved of religion, but the sailors were paying for their meals, cash on the barrelhead. The strapped North Korean government, meanwhile, was greedy for money they could exchange on international markets, so they complied with the Albanian sailors’ bourgeois requirements.

During my briefings in Seoul, I’d been told about the corruption among the staff of the People’s Hall of International Friendship. I’d even been told that some of the bolder foreign sailors had smuggled in contraband and
then paid staff members to lead them to illicit dealers who operated near the port. The North Korean authorities almost certainly knew about these things but turned a blind eye, probably because much of the profit ended up in their pockets. It was a safe bet that Commander Koh, the customs officer in charge of the Port of Nampo, kept the lion’s share of the money earned not only from smuggling but also from Food Worker Pei, with her voluptuous figure and her rubber glove.

After the dinner plates had been removed, the half-dozen older women brought out glass bottles, about the size of American pop bottles, filled with a clear fluid. They plopped three bottles in the center of each table. The label said
Red Star Soju
, in both Korean and English. Immediately, the sailors started squabbling over the bottles. The Korean women shook their heads in disgust. The custom is to pour for your comrades first and then one of your comrades pours for you. Mergim, who’d been here before, offered to pour some of the clear rice liquor into my tin cup. I refused. I’d stick with barley tea.

“You don’t want to get drunk?” he asked.

I nodded toward Food Worker Pei. She stood in the foyer, flirting with one of the guards.

“Ah, that first.” Mergim tapped the side of his head. “Smart.”

The Albanian sailors were tossing back huge shots of the fierce rice liquor, and some of them had already called for more. Once they laid Hong Kong dollars on the table, the old women delivered.

A shrill voice erupted from ancient speakers. Static screeched but the voice kept on, unperturbed, extolling the
glories of the Great Leader and the paradise that was the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. The strident message was delivered first in Korean, then in English. None of the Albanian sailors paid any attention; they were more interested in guzzling soju. But then the voice stopped and strains of martial music erupted out of the old speakers like an ancient brass band. A side door opened and a troupe of men and women wearing the brown-wool, high-necked uniforms of the Korean People’s Army marched in. The men wore round caps lidded like ancient jars, the women soft caps with short brims, both emblazoned with huge red stars. They goose-stepped toward the front of the hall, swinging their fists as they marched. Soon they were posing before us, raising the red-star flag of North Korea, singing, striking new poses, and finally engaging in something that could loosely be called a dance. It was more like a series of poses that they switched to on cue, creating a tableaux that illustrated events narrated by the lyrics. When one song stopped, another started without pause. As best I could gather, they were telling the tale of the Korean people’s epic struggle against colonial forces—the Japanese, who had occupied Korea from 1910 to 1945; and then, to hear the North Koreans tell it, the United States from 1945 onward, in the southern portion of the country. The twentieth century had been a constant struggle for them, a series of tribulations they saw as ongoing.

The sailors glanced occasionally at the entertainment but mostly ignored it. The men in the troupe were all baby-faced and slender, their movements nothing less than effeminate. The women were strong, determined, and assertive, and their cheeks glowed crimson when
they belted out tunes praising the Great Leader. Since they were fully clothed in heavy wool uniforms, including thick tunics, long skirts, and black combat boots, the sailors didn’t have much to look at.

It was an hour before the performers took a break, promising to be back for more. Finally, the scratchy speakers subsided into silence.

“I want to go back to Hong Kong,” Mergim said, slugging down another shot of soju.

I’d noticed some movement in the front hallway. “I’ll be back,” I told him, then stood up and strode past drunken and arguing Albanian sailors.

The truth was that I didn’t plan to return at all, not if I could help it. I hoped Mergim would be all right. He’d been a good friend to me, and even though he’d been well paid for his efforts, I’d grown fond of him and respected the tough life he’d led. My handlers in Seoul had assured me that the Communist Albanian government would look after him. I prayed they had been telling the truth.

The guard talking to Food Worker Pei noticed my approach and turned and sauntered away. Without looking at me, she stepped into a hallway that led toward the back of the building.

I followed.

It was dark back there, but I saw her a few yards ahead, moonlight filtering though a smoke-smudged window. She was slipping something on over her right hand, something that creaked and flapped like thick rubber. Not supple like the synthetic materials made in the West. More like a flipper.

My mission was to avoid another war between North and South Korea. Or at least that’s what Major Bulward, the executive officer of the 501
^st
Military Intelligence Battalion, told me. I didn’t really believe him. The military of both the North and the South had been longing for war ever since the ceasefire had been signed in June of 1953, more than twenty years ago. The Korean War had settled nothing, despite the death of two or three million people—depending on whom you asked. Korea, a four-thousand-year-old society, was still divided. Families were unable to communicate, either by phone or by letter, and people who were separated by the Demilitarized Zone that slashed through the center of the country couldn’t even be sure if their loved ones were dead or alive. And the U.S. military, despite all its talk of peace, was aching to become involved in another conventional conflict. Now that the Vietnam War was all but wound down, the American brass was sick of guerilla warfare. They wanted a good old-fashioned head butt: major armies, tank battalions, naval armadas, squadrons of jet fighters—the fun stuff—all slugging it out in a defined field of conflict. So when Major Bulward told me that my mission would help us avoid war, I knew it was bull. I also knew that if I were successful, the information I sought might actually ignite a war, by encouraging the South Koreans to go north. I hoped not, but I knew it was possible.

My mission—my real mission—was to find an ancient manuscript that contained a description of a vast network of caverns and underground waterways that led from an area in North Korea near Mount Osong to an area in South Korea near Mount Daesong. In other words, a secret
passageway beneath the DMZ. The existence of such a manuscript had been rumored amongst scholars for centuries, but I’d come into possession of physical proof that it actually existed, a fragment that had been confirmed to be genuine by experts.

Despite its name, the Korean Demilitarized Zone—or DMZ—is the most heavily militarized border in the world. An estimated 700,000 heavily armed Communist soldiers guard the northern side and an estimated 450,000 ROK soldiers guard the southern side, assisted by 30,000 American GIs of the United States Army’s Second Infantry Division.