The Revisionists (17 page)

“And who are we seeing these days?” Joyce asked as if reading his mind. She asked that every time, just to see what dodge her son would come up with.

“An HIV-positive drag queen.”

“Well, don’t do anything you can be blackmailed for, in your line of work.”

Then the check, and a quick discussion about where to go for Thanksgiving (the islands, maybe? Or just stay home? Or ski?), which would likely be the next time they saw one another. Hugs at the curb, and Alan walked home while Joyce hailed a taxi back to the office for what would be, she warned her husband, another long night.

Leo rode the Metro back into the city and thought about what Bale had told him that morning. According to Bale’s sources at State and the Agency, Sari’s employer was Hyun Ki Shim, a thirty-seven-year-old diplomat. He’d started work at South Korea’s embassy in Washington six months ago, following five years with South Korea’s state department. Shim had a fabulously wealthy uncle in the telecommunications business and had enjoyed an uninteresting upbringing. He was once married to a history professor in Seoul, but she had died of complications from minor surgery a year after they had their daughter, Hana. He remarried, and his new wife and their children had lived in Seoul until two months ago—she had given birth to twins and didn’t want to travel until they were older. No one had any dirt or unusual suspicions about this particular diplomat.

His wife was where things got interesting. Sang Hee was born in North Korea. She’d defected seven years ago—the story that she had told the South Korean state security was that she was a nurse living in Pyongyang until the fateful day her first husband said something about Kim Jong Il he shouldn’t have. The family was sent north to a labor camp in an unnamed town. According to her, her husband and kids died at the camp, and she—by some unexplained miracle—escaped to China and defected to the South. She was vetted by South Korea’s national intelligence service and was relocated to Seoul, where she had distant relatives from before the country’s civil war. A few years later she met a dapper widower. They soon married, which won her a ticket to Washington.

“The idea of a high-status South Korean diplomat going for a North Korean woman who’d already supposedly been married and had kids,” Bale said, “doesn’t exactly fit the stereotype. And the South Koreans’ current process for vetting defectors does not inspire confidence. Their president is pushing his ‘sunshine policy’ and keeps talking about improving relations, opening up the North, blah blah blah. They’re getting weak and sloppy, and the result is we have a North Korean woman with a fanciful life story staying just up the road from the White House. My guy says he warned State about it, but they just said he was being paranoid. Meaning, they agree but have other problems. Meaning, she doesn’t wear a burka and blow herself up at intersections, and they can only fight so many wars at once.”

Bale had also managed a check on Sari. She’d given Leo her real name; she was twenty-two and an Indonesian citizen, had obtained a South Korean work visa a few years back. From what State could gather, her visa had expired but someone in South Korea had pulled some strings for her—which might be a sign of covert activity, but was probably just a result of her working for a rich guy who had connections. If she was a double agent trying to ensnare Leo in something, they’d covered her tracks well, both in South Korea and in her native land.

“Plus, you’re just a private contractor, not a government officer,” Bale added, seemingly unaware of the insult, “so the odds that they’re trying to ensnare you are minimal.”

Leo had been thinking of her almost constantly. For not entirely business-related reasons. And he was thrilled to have something to work on that didn’t involve tailing peace activists.

Bale reminded him that he had “no official mandate, responsibility, role, or even legal right to do anything,” but he nonetheless exhorted Leo to investigate. Leo’s primary focus should remain the knoweverything.org project, of course, but any extra time could be devoted to recruiting Sari to spy on the Korean couple and seeing what she could find. Eavesdrop, tap into their computers, and/or take embarrassing photos that could be used to place either the diplomat or his wife in a delicate position where they could be further exploited. South Korea’s sunshine policy was dangerous to American interests, so they needed to know how much of it was political posturing and how much was genuine.

Leo felt proud of himself for finding Sari, for uncovering information that had impressed not only Bale but “his guys” at the Agency and at State, whoever they were. Yet he felt a twinge of sadness at how quickly she was transformed from an alluring young woman into an asset.

The small bistro where he met Gail was close enough to Dupont Circle to have its fair share of yuppie couples flirting over martinis and close enough to Foggy Bottom for some suits from State to be conspiring in a corner booth. Gail had already eaten at some official function she couldn’t talk about. They sat at one of the small tables off the bar.

They had trained together a few years back, although not nearly as long ago as it felt. They’d bonded during the experience and ever since had kept in as close touch as was possible for people in their line of work—the occasional e-mail, regards passed through various intermediaries, a brief lunch or drink on the rare occasion they both happened to be in the same city. She’d sent him a line telling him she’d be in D.C. for a few days, and he’d pounced.

“Do you like what you’re working on these days?” He phrased it in a way that made it clear he wasn’t asking her to divulge anything. Only her feelings, which by their nature could never be classified. Right?

“I do. It’s great.” She smiled and shrugged, as if she felt guilty.

“Good.” He tried not to look jealous.

Leo had wanted to sleep with her since the first day of training and felt proud of himself for not acting on it, thought of his Agency-enforced chastity regarding his fellow trainee as his first step in the self-abnegating life of an operative. Or maybe he was just trying to make himself feel better for not having the nerve to make a move.

But now he could sleep with whomever he wanted, at least in theory, so he’d been thrilled to see her name in his in-box. He hoped she felt the same way, and nothing was disproving it yet: the strong drink she ordered, her low neckline, the way she smiled as they rehashed stories of their training. Drinks were dutifully refilled.

“How’s life after the Agency?”

He chafed at the comment. “I like to think of it as being on hold.”

“Oh.” She watched him for a moment. Was that pity? “Good.”

“I’m doing similar work as a green-tag,” he lied, to both of them. She asked what sort of work he was doing and he described his latest assignments in terms vague enough to render them potentially interesting: the tracking of dangerous radicals, investigations into breaches of classified information.

“Very domestic,” she noted, not fooled. “I mean, you have foreign experience, languages, counterterrorism. There are dozens of other firms that could use your skills.”

“I guess I didn’t want to deal with a long, protracted job hunt. You know, take the first job that comes along, stay busy. I can always switch again.”

She sipped her drink. “You didn’t like it, did you? Being there.”

“I did. Most of it.”

“Look, Leo, just between us, I think what happened to you was rotten.”

“It
was
rotten.”

“I don’t think people should be punished for what they say.”

“But that’s what we do, isn’t it?”

“I mean internally. Just because you were a whistle-blower doesn’t mean—”

“I wasn’t a
whistle-blower
. Who said it like that?”

“I just meant—”

“A
whistle-blower?
That’s how they talk about me?”

She gave him a look. “No one talks about you, Leo.”

Twist the knife a little, thanks,
he thought. There was a new distance in her eyes, and he felt the picture of her bedroom slipping away.

“The shit I saw, Gail, was not right.” He slowed it down and said it a second time, his finger tapping the table with each syllable: “It was not right.” There was more he could say. Descriptions, details. The sounds they made. Instead, he said, “I did what anyone would have done.”

“Except plenty of other people haven’t.”

“And they get to look at themselves in the mirror. I look at me.”

“And you like what you see.”

He couldn’t tell if there was a question mark there. He turned it around on her: “Do you?”

“I do,” she said. “I love the job. I feel needed. It’s hard as hell, but this is what I want.”

He’d meant
Do you like what you see when you look at me?
not when she looked at herself. She’d missed the sad attempt at a come-on and instead preened in her own mental compact, admiring her accomplishments. He was angry at himself for getting defensive and uptight, for making the mistake of thinking that this was an appropriate time to vent about the things he couldn’t mention to anyone else.
There
is
no appropriate time. Get used to it.

“They all look so happy, don’t they?” he asked, motioning to the people around them, eating large, getting drunk. He’d glanced at the menu, duck here and braised spare rib there, the seventy-dollar and beyond bottles of wine. “No clue what’s going on.”

“You have to enjoy yourself somehow.”

“But doesn’t it piss you off? The things we do, and the people we do it for, and they’re here partying like it’s still 1999? Did they miss something, or have we?”

Her glass was empty. She was putting cash on the table.

“It was good to see you, Leo.” Then they shared a brief farewell hug, and off she went, he trying not to check out her ass, the ass he wouldn’t have, the ass that was off to important geopolitical adventures. He sat back down, his glass half empty, and ordered another drink. Might as well make it official that he was here for the night.

Z.

D
welling on the past is unhealthy and dangerous. It leads to self-perpetuating hatred, to Unclean Thoughts and Malicious Motives. We’re taught this in school, and in all levels of the Perfect Society. Hope for a better future can be washed away by excessive thoughts about harmful pasts. I know this, yet I’ve found it harder and harder to obey the rule since my family’s accident.

I first met Cemby at one of the Unification Day rallies, held in the cities every hundred days. We all held our flags and were silent at the beginning, when they showed old images from the wars on the giant screens, the speakers echoing short clips of people’s cries. The Government probably didn’t realize it—and no one would have dared admit it, as it was borderline illegal—but many of us found these glimpses titillating. We’d been told so little about what had happened, we were given such cursory summaries in school and in the occasional backward-looking Daily Missive, that these brief video clips were fascinating.
What had it really been like back then? How bad
was
it?
We didn’t want to know, and yet we did.

We had the requisite moment of silence for all that our ancestors had lost, and for the successes of the Phoenix Generation, our forebears who learned how to lay down their arms, how to cobble together the few survivors into a new society. We applauded as our most recent advances were announced. Scientists were making new discoveries, re-creating the best of the old world while taking bold steps forward. Government Archivists were continually studying the pre-Conflagration period, passing on information when it was deemed beneficial. The most recent outbreaks of influenza and other viruses had been better contained than in previous years; the Agriculture Division was repairing the soil, making more areas fertile.

We cheered and waved our flags and sang the slogans. The pageantry always felt a bit much to me, but it was a good excuse to get out in the sun—on Unification Days, the atmospheric barriers were stretched across the tallest buildings, providing shade, which was a welcome rarity. The rallies usually devolved into free-floating picnics after the speeches, most people taking the rest of the afternoon off. I was sitting with a few friends, other officers mostly, and beside us was a group of young professionals distinguished solely by the fact that one of the women was stunning. I decided it was my patriotic duty to introduce myself and get to know her.

Wings were the style that year. Every jacket seemed to have them, sewn onto the shoulders, some of them hanging forward and others flapping in the back. Extra cotton and synthetics, a waste in my opinion, but it was the fad, everyone was doing it. Some were angular and spiked, metallic devils’ or demons’, others were curved like angels’ wings or birds’. No one really knew much about angels or devils anymore; the stories were gone and all that was left were rumors, whispers. But here they were, reincarnated as fashion. I knew a little about the original stories from my classified research, had heard of Lucifer and Gabriel and a few others, and was surprised the Government allowed such fetishism. Maybe they considered it an allowable manifestation of something latent in us, a harmless commercialization of a part of ourselves we’d forgotten.

She wore a jacket with smallish black wings on the shoulders, barely visible, suggesting a willingness to go along with the trend and also a certain conservatism I appreciated. Her name was Cemby, she said. Short for December. I didn’t know the word at the time and she told me it used to be the name of a “month,” a twelfth of a year. I commented on how unusual a name it was, how surprising that the Government hadn’t objected to the choice.

“My father’s a level-five Archivist, so they gave him a pass. I think he told them it was
poetic
.” She wore her hair long then, and it seemed to change colors when the sun emerged from the clouds. “He said his grandmother had been born on the last day of December, so it’s an homage to her.”