CHAPTER 3

The Northerner

Doha always said that in every city, there is A rhythm and that Yohan must be aware of this rhythm and flow with it when necessary. In London or Berlin, the city awakes and that rhythm starts abruptly. In Oxford it is a trickle.

Yohan is loitering in an alley behind a building, right across from the Magpie. He is listening on an earpiece connected to a device he had planted under the bar a long time ago. So far, it is as expected. The Americans have called it in and alerted headquarters. They’re planning to clean the place up and close it all down. He can see the pub as he hears them talk. He can imagine the wooden beams under which Seonhye must be pacing while the man, known as Roland on paper, is talking to her about their immediate plans from behind the dark brown bar that stretches across half the pub’s length.

It was Doha’s idea to make the pub Junichi’s go-to place. To make it look like he was being lured in by the bartender, Seonhye.

“Won’t they think it’s odd?”

“Maybe, but Americans are not used to their plans falling apart,” Doha said to him. “And as long as things are going their way, they’re not going to pay much attention.”

Yohan knows this is the case because there have been times when Seonhye has tried to ask him questions. Yohan has never revealed much to her, except weaving the story of Junichi Nakamura and stretching that thread as far as he can. She chats him up every night and tries to get the conversation going until Yohan has to physically pry himself away from the bar and call it a day. She always talks as if she is an open book, giving him intimate details about what he assumes is her cover. Seonhye, as she says, is Korean. She is from Korea, born and raised there. However, she always avoids speaking the language, saying she is here to practise English rather than speak Korean. Her English is impeccable, so much so that she pronounces Seoul as “Soul” instead of “Saw-ool.”

Roland mentions that they need to go to Doha’s flat. Yohan thinks he has covered their tracks but remembers the hidden gun. He wonders whether he should try to recover it, but the Americans are fast. The two rush out of the pub’s front door and get into a grey Volvo. He’ll never get there in time. He gives up on the gun.

Once the car is out of sight, Yohan emerges and walks to the Magpie. The first floor of the two-storey building is the pub, and it is littered with concealed cameras, even in the bathrooms. There is one hidden at the centre of the clock on the wall. Another is inside the letter o on the label of a bottle of whisky. So far, he has counted thirteen hidden cameras. The second floor is where the Americans live and keep all their equipment. It is where the real work is done. There are two access points, one through the front door and another through the back door. Both entrances guarantee getting caught by cameras.

He looks around. There is no one on the streets right now. No cars are passing by. He swiftly climbs the building’s facade and perches on a window ledge on the second floor. He tries the window and finds it is locked. He takes out a small pocket knife, fits it between the sash and the windowsill, and presses the knife down until the lock pops out of its place. He enters a room with two bunk beds and a small table with a digital alarm clock sitting on top. He steps into the living room, where he finds two chairs, a desk, and a filing cabinet with an open safe on top. He goes back to his pocket knife and pulls out a pin tool. Once he unlocks the cabinet, he goes through various documents that outline profiles of him and his mentor, Doha Kim. They also have information on all his colleagues strewn across Europe, all of them now dead.

There is a password-protected laptop. He tries the trick that Doha taught him, which is to reload the computer with safe mode. It works, but he finds nothing of interest. The email account has another layer of password protection, which will be trickier to get through. There is a small trash can beside a fax machine in the corner of the living room. He looks inside and sees pieces of ripped paper. He pours the contents onto the floor and starts reassembling the pieces. He is able to form two pages outlining a plan to retrieve Junichi Nakamura by sending in two new agents. He sees their photos. One is a woman with light hair and the other is a heavily bearded man. He remembers their faces, names, and profiles. Afterward, he jumbles up the pieces and puts them back in the trash can.

Finally, he checks the dining room and comes across Doha’s body. He is startled to see him like this, laid out on the table as if he is a trophy from a hunt. Yohan approaches. His hand hovers over where Doha was stabbed. The knife went deep into his stomach, cutting the aorta in his abdominals. He was barely conscious when Yohan got to him and bled to death only minutes after being attacked.

Yohan looks down at the man who gave him everything. The closest he’s ever had to a father. He ponders the tightening of his chest and wonders if this is real sorrow. He holds Doha’s hand, now cold and dry. He remembers seeing children holding hands with their parents, realizing that he has never held anyone’s hand like that before. He wishes Doha would sit up and tell him it was all an elaborate test, but he doesn’t. Doha is truly gone, and he is on his own.

“Goodbye, seonsaeng-nim,” he says as he lets go of the hand.

He checks whether the street is still empty, then quickly makes his exit through the window.

•

Three days after Doha confirms with Pyongyang that the Brussels operative has gone missing, they locate him in Norway. Yohan takes a morning flight to Bergen. After taking a cab to the city centre, he walks to the small fourth-floor lodging he had rented, from which he can see directly into the window of his target’s apartment.

Over the course of a week, he maps out his target’s patterns. He has grown a light beard since Yohan last saw him. He steps out of his apartment every day in the mid-afternoon and gets back around dinnertime, anywhere between 1800 to 1900 hours. He also jogs regularly in the mornings. Usually, the same route down the hill, through the city centre to the docks, and then back up.

Yohan initiates his plan on the eighth day. He watches the target, clad in a black jacket and jeans, stroll out the building’s front entrance. Yohan waits for an hour and then walks across the street, entering the target’s building. He climbs a narrow set of stairs past the front door. On the third flight of stairs, he turns to the target’s door, picks the lock, and opens it. Inside, he inches forward, looking out for wires. He is greeted by a modest dwelling. A single bed, a table, a chair, and a stool by the fridge. It is a mirror image of the space that he is temporarily occupying.

Yohan goes to the window, pulls back the curtains, and looks outside. The day is cloudy, and few people are in the streets. Beyond, he sees a mountain rising above the city. By his calculations, the man will arrive in approximately two hours. He drags the chair a bit so that he will be facing the door directly when the target enters the flat.

When the man returns after an hour, he holds a bag of groceries in his arms. He sees Yohan sitting on the chair. Yohan nods at him, and he nods back, calm as a host finding a guest who has arrived early.

“Dongmu, you’re finally here,” the target says, setting the groceries on the counter and lowering himself onto the stool. The Hamkyeongdo accent is heavy in his Korean.

Yohan does not answer. His protocol is clear on these missions — do not engage, simply execute.

“I saw you, dongmu. I was wondering when you’d come over. Your unit is small, isn’t it? I think the apartment I used to have with my omani back home was much larger.”

The man, leaning his arm on his knee, smirks momentarily and then looks at the floor. It makes Yohan uneasy, and he wonders if there is something under the floorboard. It’s the one place he didn’t look when he was sweeping the apartment for weapons.

The man stands up and moves toward the kettle on the stove. “Would you like some tea?”

Yohan does not respond. The man takes his silence as agreement and simply carries on, putting two bags of black tea into two mugs — one red and one grey with a small triangular piece chipped away on the edge, leaving a short trail of forking cracks beneath. The gas stove heats up, the blue flames flaring up after a quiet tick-tick-tick and a whip. The green kettle’s bottom is blackened; the fire licks at it hungrily, familiarly.

“There is no hurry,” the man says. “I’m not going to run from this.”

Yohan hears thumps from above; someone is stomping around upstairs. He can clearly make out a woman talking in the unit next to them. She sounds angry, like she is accusing someone.

“It’s a bit noisy here. I thought it’d be nice and quiet in Norway. Turns out people are people everywhere.”

Yohan leans back and, with steady eyes, observes the man.

“I suppose this is as expected,” the man says, looking out the window. “I don’t know what I wanted to find. I suppose that’s why I haven’t left, though I should’ve.”

The kettle whistles. Yohan readies himself, expecting the other man to hurl boiling water at him while he makes a break for it. But he does not. Instead, he serves tea in slow, relaxed movements.

“How is he doing? Our Commander Doha,” he asks Yohan, his hands wrapped around his mug.

Yohan does not answer but instead glances around the room, vigilant for an unseen threat or surprise.

“Please, dongmu. Do spare your comrade some companionship in his last moments. Have some tea. It was very expensive. Here, everything is.”

Yohan sniffs first, then presses the edge of the cup to his lips. Once he confirms that it does not taste off, he takes a fuller sip.

“Is it good?” The target grins expectantly.

Yohan tips his head a bit, not to give an answer but to simply respond.

“Ah, I was hoping for more of a reaction. I suppose money doesn’t exactly buy better tea. Capitalist lies and whatnot.” He shakes his head, takes a sip from his cup, and then puts the mug down on the small table next to him and leans in with his hands pressed together. “Tea from home was much better. All these different tastes, all these different choices, yet nothing compares to the little we had. I miss it dearly. Do you not miss home?” he asks Yohan.

After a pause the man chuckles. “Right, maybe not as much as I do. I have my omani back home, you see. When they sent us out here, they sent us out here with nothing. Not even a picture.” The man drifts off for a while, setting his gaze on a place beyond the room. “Do you know what that’s like? To forget your own omani’s face? It started with not remembering what her ears looked like. Soon after, parts of her face started disappearing from my memory. It spread to her mouth. I forgot how her lips formed when she would speak. How her smile curled up to her cheeks. She had this endless smile for me. The way her face would fold in a thousand different places. And before I realized what was happening, I lost her nose one day. And then her cheeks. And then her eyes. Her face became a blank canvas. Like those egg ghosts you heard from folk tales, yeah? Their faces just erased, a flat, smooth surface with nothing on them.”

The comrade rubs his eyes, sighing, the story taking a toll on him. “Then I saw her one night. I dreamed of her. She was wearing this white jeogori and chima. She was telling me that she was waiting for me. I asked her where she was waiting and she wouldn’t say. Why would she come to me then? After all that time? I had to think something was wrong.”

With a quick glance, Yohan checks his watch. He hopes he won’t have to cut the comrade short. It is the last courtesy he wants to show him.

“So I asked the commander. I asked him if he could send her a message for me and he told me he couldn’t. I asked whether she was living in an apartment in Kaesong like he told me. He refused to answer and said that it was classified. Why would that be classified? I just wanted to know that she was okay, that she was provided for like the Dear Leader promised. That was all I wanted to know. But the commander told me I didn’t need to know anything. Only to accept what I’ve been told. Because his word was the word of the Leader. But I knew that something was off because the dreams never stopped. She kept appearing, telling me that she was sorry. I kept asking her why she was sorry, but she simply kept crying. I knew something had happened to her. They said my omani would be taken care of, yet she could be in the camps for all I know.”

Yohan recognizes a familiar look in the comrade’s face. It is the face of silent desperation that he has seen only in other children at the orphanage. The kind that creeps over when the situation is life or death, yet there is nothing that can be done. When hunger can’t be helped because there simply is no food or when pain from wounds can’t be relieved because no one cares for you.

The man flashes Yohan a bitter grin. “In a way, you are the fortunate one, my dongmu. You have nothing you’re tethered to. You’re a floater. You know nothing about what it means to have someone who depends on you, who is connected to you. You’ve never been someone to anyone.”

Yohan holds his silence. His grip on his cup tightens slightly. He says nothing back because there is no need to respond. Doha instructed him to not say anything and simply carry out the task.

“You must see it. We are all dead already. The moment we stepped on this foreign soil to do our duty, we all became empty husks. I really thought this would be the best for all of us. I thought I was doing something for my omani back home. So I left with hope in my heart. But all I want now is to taste my omani’s stew.”

The man sighs, and it looks as if he has finally made a decision he has put off for a long time. He finishes his tea in one gulp and puts his mug in the sink. “Well, how will we do this?”

“A pill.”

“Which one?”

Yohan takes a small black box from his coat and opens it, revealing a white pill with a red stripe.

“Ah, this one. At least Commander Doha shows me mercy. What will they say about me?” he asks.

Yohan begins to recite what the commander prepared. “You were on a mission to intercept a Russian politician’s meeting with the Norwegians, but a Namjoseon spy discovered you. Your pursuers got close. They almost had you. As they were ramming down the door, you realized there was no way out, so you committed suicide and went down without spilling a word to the republic’s enemies.”

He nods with each beat of the story, listening carefully to Yohan’s words. “Good,” he says. “Not that it matters.”

The comrade plucks the pill from its container and stares at it. He drags it around his palm with his index finger, lifts his head, and grins. Yohan has never seen this kind of serenity in a man about to die. He has always had to do it either by force or without the target’s knowledge. Yohan points his chin to the pill, telling the comrade to get on with it.

“I hope you find something for yourself in the end, dongmu.” He pops it quickly in his mouth, swallowing once. He walks over to the bed, lies down, and closes his eyes. There is no struggle nor the slightest utterance of pain on his lips. He simply falls asleep. After five minutes Yohan gets up and leans his head toward the man’s chest. There is no heartbeat.

Yohan collects the comrade’s gear, hidden in the cupboards behind a false panel, a standard set-up according to Doha’s training manual for his operatives. There he also finds the comrade’s money and identification. He takes all but one of the passports and leaves it on the table for whoever discovers the body.