The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson

Author:Adam Johnson
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3, pdf
ISBN: 9780679643999
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2012-01-09T17:00:00+00:00

THE ELEVATOR plummeted deep into Bunker 13, where Commander Ga would meet the Dear Leader. Ga felt a sharp pain in his eardrums and his body felt limp, as if he were free-falling back into a prison mine. Seeing Comrade Buc—his smile, his thumbs-up—had opened a void in Commander Ga between the person he used to be and the person he’d become. Comrade Buc was the only person who existed on both sides of Commander Ga’s void, who knew both the young hero who’d gone to Texas and the new husband of Sun Moon, the most dangerous man in Pyongyang. Now Ga felt rattled. He felt newly aware that he wasn’t invincible, that it wasn’t destiny in control of him but danger.

When the elevator doors opened, deep in Bunker 13, a team of elite bodyguards gave Commander Ga an eleven-point body search, though it was nothing worse than what he’d experienced each time he’d returned from Japan. The room was white and cold. They took a cup of urine from him and a clipping of hair. He barely got his clothes back on before he heard the clacking of heels growing louder in the hall outside as guards saluted the approach of the Dear Leader. Then the door simply opened, and in stepped Kim Jong Il. He wore a gray jumpsuit and designer glasses that amplified the playfulness in his eyes.

“There you are, Ga,” he said. “We missed you.”

Commander Ga gave a long, deep bow, fulfilling his first promise to Sun Moon.

The Dear Leader smiled. “That wasn’t so hard,” he said. “That didn’t cost you anything, did it?” He placed a hand on Ga’s shoulder and looked up into his eyes. “But the bow must come in public. Isn’t that what I told you?”

Commander Ga said, “Can’t a man practice?”

“There’s the Ga I love,” the Dear Leader said. On the table was a mounted Siberian fox posed mid-pounce above a white vole, a gift of Constantine Dorosov, mayor of Vladivostok. The Dear Leader looked as though he might admire the fur of the fox, but instead he stroked the vole, its teeth bared against the threat above. “I should still be cross with you, Ga,” he said. “I can’t even count your wrongdoings. You let our most productive prison burn, along with fifteen hundred of our best inmates. I’m still trying to explain to the Chinese Premier your episode at that bathhouse in Shenyang. My driver of twenty years, he’s still in a coma. The new one drives fine, but I miss the old one—his loyalty had been tested many times.” Here, the Dear Leader returned to him. With a hand on the shoulder, the Dear Leader pressed Ga to his knees, so the Dear Leader now towered above. “And what you said to me at the opera, that cannot be unsaid. Your head would be the only way to restore the injury. And what leader wouldn’t wish you gone, to disappear forever for all the trouble you cause? Do you forget that I gave you Sun Moon? Still, I have a soft spot for your antics.

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