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Chapter 8: The Back-Alley Doctor
TL: Enuma ID
Hwanggumpyong is a strange place, physically fused to the Chinese landmass yet counted as North Korean soil.
So even though I'd told the taxi driver my destination was Hwanggumpyong, I couldn't actually go inside it.
It wasn't my real destination anyway.
"Driver, could you just drop me off around here? I'm going to grab a bite nearby."
Е n ǔmá . іd
"Yes, sir."
"Keep the change."
Dilarang mengopy novel dari Enuma.id.
"Oh my. Thank you, sir."
When I stepped out of the taxi, the shabby sign of Wang Chunsam's Eatery came into view in the distance, beyond a road swirling with dust.
From there, I set off at a leisurely stroll.
Now that everything that had gone sideways was back where it belonged, my heart was brimming with ease.
Ėnù ṁ ӑ . іḋ
Crash!
"Hm?"
But not long after I'd gotten out of the taxi, an utterly absurd scene caught my eye.
Half a dozen Chinese gangsters were bustling around a row of shops, smashing every signboard and fixture the stores had set out front.
Dilarang mengopy novel dari Enuma.id.
Just then, they gathered in a circle around one of them, the standing sign of Wang Chunsam's Eatery, and stomped it to pieces without mercy.
Smash!
Ẁ е̂ b̆no̊ v е̇ l̇ Е ñúm а̇
"What's going on here?"
I had no idea what was happening, but for the moment I decided to stand still and watch.
A few other people had stuck their heads out of the buildings to watch the commotion, same as me.
Looking at the standing sign lying shattered across the ground, a corner of my heart ached in spite of myself.
'There goes sunbae's retirement fund.'
I had no clue how things worked around this neighborhood, or why those bastards were doing this.
Dilarang mengopy novel dari Enuma.id.
But there was one thing I knew for certain.
Those men were not to be touched.
Anyone who rolls around in counterintelligence work long enough naturally comes to learn that China's back alleys are tangled up in guanxi beyond all imagining.
One wrong move against even a single beggar panhandling on the street, and an unimaginably complicated chain of grudges and debts would come trailing along behind it like a string of sausages.
'Are these the thugs who run the local shops?'
In a situation like this, letting some misplaced fighting spirit flare up and playing hero would be a betrayal of my duty as an NIS black agent.
Е n̈ ŭ m̂а
So I stood quietly and waited for the gangsters' little event to end.
Strangely enough, though, for all the rampage outside, neither Wang Chunsam's Eatery nor any of the neighboring shops showed the slightest reaction.
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The gangsters huffed and swaggered and prowled around for quite a while, and once they'd confirmed there was nothing left to break, they left without a backward glance.
For a spectator, it was a decidedly anticlimactic ending.
"Tsk."
Not long after the gangsters had vanished completely from sight, people began trickling out of the shop buildings, one and two at a time.
Е n um̃ а̃ .і d
They slowly gathered up the broken flowerpots and dented fixtures, piling them in one spot, exchanging warm, cheerful greetings all the while as if nothing had happened.
It was a strange, peaceful sight, like stagehands clearing the set after a play.
Among them, I spotted a face I knew.
Kite No. 3 sunbae's cover wife and my hyeongsu-nim, Chae A-ra.
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She too had come out with a broom, busily sweeping up the debris while chatting away with the lady from the shop next door.
'Who was it that said it? Seeing everything and pretending you saw nothing is the true virtue of a black agent.'
Е̌ñů m а̃
If I walked over now and made a show of knowing her, I'd be ruining all the effort they'd put into keeping their identities so well hidden.
So I loitered at a distance and waited for the cleanup to finish.
Eventually, everyone returned to their own shops.
Only then did I start walking as well.
Ding-a-ling.
When I opened the door and stepped inside, the old bell hanging within gave a light jingle.
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"Excuse me. Are you serving food right now?"
"Oh dear. I am sorry, sir. Our cook hurt his shoulder yesterday, so the restaurant will be closed for the time being.... Ah?"
Chae A-ra came out of the kitchen, and the moment she spotted me, her large eyes went wide and blinking.
There was no way she wouldn't recognize me; we'd been sitting around chatting as recently as lunch today.
"Something simple will do. I did have a bowl of porridge two hours ago, after all."
And so, a mere two hours after breezing off, I had shamelessly returned to mooch another meal.
Е n̆u m̃а́
*****
Kite No. 3, who had been busy recuperating in bed, found himself abruptly eating an early dinner because of me.
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They say no one loves a husband like his wife, and sure enough, for him, after all that blood loss, a special dish of ox-blood soup came out.
The dish set in front of me was Chinese-style oil noodles tossed in chili oil.
"So.... in the two hours you were gone, you stormed a State Security Department safe house, shot the External Intelligence Bureau director and deputy director dead, rescued three kidnapped South Korean tourists, then crossed the Yalu again, secured Hyon Yong-chol and his entire family, handed them over to the Crane agents, and came straight back here?"
Kite No. 3 stopped blowing on his ox-blood soup and stared at me blankly.
W еb̀ n ov̄_e ĺ _Е n u m̆ а
"Yes."
"...Seriously?"
"That's what I said."
"How?"
Dilarang mengopy novel dari Enuma.id.
"Good question."
"No, don't just wave it all off like that.... Start with the bureau director and the deputy director. Give me the details on that part."
E n ůṁ ӓ
The only fact I could offer him was the end result, that I had shot dead the director and deputy director of the State Security Department's External Intelligence Bureau, along with more than ten North Korean soldiers.
If I told him I'd strapped Claymores to my body and carried out a suicide attack, getting treated like a lunatic would be the best-case outcome.
"I stole a North Korean uniform, went up to the third floor, and what do you know, the bureau director and deputy director were sitting side by side in the office. So I just shot them dead."
"How? There must have been guards posted on every floor."
"There weren't? They all looked busy roaming around outside kidnapping tourists."
"Then.... after you fired?"
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"About ten North Korean soldiers did come charging in at the sound of gunfire. Those I blew up with a Claymore I'd rigged on the stairs beforehand."
When the outcome is already fixed, sketching a plausible process to fit it is the easiest thing in the world.
So I improvised whatever came to mind, and somehow it all hung together rather convincingly.
I could probably file this to headquarters as an official report, word for word.
Munch, munch.
"...A Claymore? You lunatic...."
E ň ūm̊ а_.і̊ ḋ
Whether Kite No. 3 scowled or not, I kept cramming noodles into my cheeks until they were fit to burst.
The kick of the chili oil, the nutty richness of the peanuts, and on top of that, the tart crunch of pickled vegetables.
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The flavors came together in my mouth beautifully.
Gulp.
"Wow, hyeongsu-nim, this is really good. Is it something you sell at the restaurant?"
"It is not. It is only something we mix up roughly among ourselves to get by when our appetites run poor."
Е̇ n̆ ú ṁ a
"You could put this on the menu, honestly."
"Hoho. I thank you for the compliment."
Chae A-ra, pouring water beside me, smiled shyly.
Kite No. 3 tapped my shoulder with his one working arm, telling me to explain things properly, but what did he want from me?
Dilarang mengopy novel dari Enuma.id.
That was the whole story of everything that had happened.
If anything, I'd left things out, not padded them.
W̃ ebn о̀ v е́ l̆ Е̌ n̄ǔm а
"Anyway, trucks are pouring in from the North Korean side in massive numbers right now. They'll probably get cozy with Dandong Public Security and start running checkpoints soon. How about lying low somewhere outside Dandong for a while?"
"Our papers are clean. You're the problem. Shouldn't you be making a run for it about now?"
"My papers are clean too, though?"
"Honestly.... you've got nerves of steel."
"By the way, a little while ago some neighborhood-thug types were going around making a racket, smashing up other people's shop signs. What was that all about?"
The information sharing seemed more or less done, so I casually brought up the scene I'd witnessed outside the restaurant.
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At that, Kite No. 3 let out a dry laugh and nodded.
"Neighborhood thugs is exactly right. The shops around here are normally run by an outfit called the Red Earth Gang, but the ones who tore through the street today were probably members of the Black Panther Gang. They're set up across the national road, and they've been inching over the line, picking a turf war with the Red Earth Gang."
"If they want to play land-grab, they should go at each other with knives. Why smash up some poor innocent shopkeeper's livelihood?"
"That's actually their way of picking a fight very politely."
Politely?
His choice of words offered a glimpse of the truly grand spirit of the Mainland.
Ẅ е̊ b̄n̄о̇ v̌ el̀ Е̌n̄ů m̊ а
"Right now, we pay protection money to the Red Earth Gang, right? But say the Black Panthers wreck the place like this, and the Red Earth boys don't retaliate within a few days? That becomes a tacit signal that they're giving up this street and handing it over to the Black Panthers. Instead of going straight to the knives like savages, they test each other's strength this way, eating into territory piece by piece."
"Then where does that leave the merchants paying the protection money? If you squeeze money out of people in the name of protection, you protect them. They're just civilians caught in the crossfire of someone else's war."
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"True enough. That's why, as a rule, the outfit that takes over a territory skips collecting protection money for the first month or so, as compensation for the fixtures they smashed. Their own brand of business ethics."
Business ethics.
Whatever business ethics I'd ever known of had apparently all frozen to death.
Smashing up innocent shopkeepers' property as a provocation to expand the turf, and if the incumbents got cold feet and folded, taking the district over....
Ӗnü ṁа̂
"This is everyday life in China."
"The Mainland, indeed...."
"You get used to it, and it's livable. That sign was made of styrofoam in the first place; it costs next to nothing. If knives come out and blood starts spilling, Public Security swarms in, and on top of that, corpses are bad for business. Frankly, this is better."
In the end, the ones left to pity in all of this were the citizens caught in the crossfire.
Dilarang mengopy novel dari Enuma.id.
A man's labor is worth less than machine parts, human rights have hit rock bottom and kept on drilling, and crime and violence are as common as breathing here.
To think he'd already lived here as a Kite for years. I couldn't help but marvel.
Ӗ ñu ḿa
"Wouldn't it be better to just move somewhere else? For a hideout, the neighborhood's way too noisy. Somewhere quieter, anywhere...."
"Everywhere in China is the same. Only the name tags on the thugs change. On the other hand, the rent here is unbelievably cheap."
"How much?"
"Three thousand yuan. For the use of this entire building."
I'd wondered why Kite No. 3 had bothered setting up in such a chaotic place; now I understood instantly.
Three thousand yuan came to roughly five hundred thousand won, and for exclusive use of an entire building with a restaurant on the first floor, that was practically a giveaway.
Dilarang mengopy novel dari Enuma.id.
"Whew, that really is cheap. All things considered, that's reason enough to put down roots here."
"Right?"
All things considered, staying rooted in the field long-term meant keeping fixed expenses to an absolute minimum.
Given Chinese prices, living costs would be next to nothing, and meanwhile the bank account he'd left behind in Korea would be collecting millions of won in salary, month after month, like clockwork. Effectively, this was the NIS equivalent of GOP duty. [TL Note: GOP duty refers to guard duty on the DMZ front line, an isolated posting where soldiers have nowhere to spend their pay.]
"Anyway, until your arm heals, sunbae, I'll prowl around the neighborhood and keep watch over you."
"Good. Very reassuring. But you're not, by any chance, carrying something like a Claymore around in that bag right now, are you?"
Еn ûm̆_ӓ .і̊d
I glanced briefly at my bag.
As it happened, I'd packed up just about everything useful from the Rabbit Hole, so it had some real weight to it.
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While I fell silent for a moment, mentally cataloguing the bag's contents, Kite No. 3's expression turned grave in an instant.
"...You're not, right?"
"It's not a Claymore."
"Not 'a Claymore'?"
Е n̂um а̀
"I'm kidding. At most it's, what, a box of ammunition?"
Truth be told, there was one adorably compact grenade in there.
But compared to a Claymore, a grenade is downright cute, isn't it?
"Then why the face.... There's nothing else you're hiding, right?"
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"...."
If it never gets used, it's as good as never having been packed.
Wе́ b nóv̂ёl̄ Е̌ṅŭm̃ӓ
So I just grinned and let it slide.
*****
In the small hours of that night, the back-alley doctor Kite No. 3 had contacted in advance came to Wang Chunsam's Eatery in person.
"It's been a while. Though they do say no news is good news."
"Don't I know it, Elder."
He was a man at the threshold of old age, bald as an egg.
Dilarang mengopy novel dari Enuma.id.
The moment he arrived, the old man deftly pulled out an IV bag and a blood pack, hung them on a coat rack, and got straight down to the procedure.
There was nothing grand enough to even call it surgery; the process was remarkably simple.
After administering a local anesthetic and antibiotics, the old man examined the muscle, nerves, and bone in the open wound, cut away only the visibly necrotic tissue, and began stitching the wound fully closed.
"You were lucky. A little higher and it would have taken out the axillary vein; a little lower and you'd have lost the use of that arm for life."
"So I kicked away a heaven-sent retirement opportunity with my own two feet."
I had been hiding in the restaurant, crouched low beneath the first-floor stairs in a blind spot outside their line of sight, eavesdropping on their conversation.
Еnǔ mа
It was partly to watch for any suspicious presence outside, and partly to keep an eye on the movements of a back-alley doctor I couldn't yet fully trust.
"This is a gunshot wound, isn't it?"
Dilarang mengopy novel dari Enuma.id.
"Yes. One thing led to another."
"Odd, though. I don't see a bullet."
"The person who gave me first aid said the bullet happened to be visible, so they pulled it out while they were at it."
"Hmm."
Е ňu m̄.a . і̌ d̃
Having finished the treatment, the back-alley doctor pulled a few spare IV bags out of his house-call kit.
Then, with a hint of hesitation, he opened his mouth.
"I owe you a debt, so I'll give you one important piece of information. Dandong Public Security is on high alert right now. They're combing through the list of everyone who's received hospital treatment for a gunshot wound, in real time. Word going around is that several members of the underworld got dragged into the Public Security basement over the course of the evening because of it."
"Did something happen?"
Dilarang mengopy novel dari Enuma.id.
"Apparently there's someone Public Security is looking for. Beyond the fact that he was shot, I don't know the details either."
It seemed some part of the Sinuiju operation had leaked to Dandong Public Security as well.
Ẁе b n̂о v̀ e l Ѐ n ū m а̇
If they'd discovered the traces of last night's firefight, the North Korean side would have figured out that one of our agents had taken a bullet.
"The man Public Security is trying to catch. That's you, isn't it?"
The back-alley doctor's question had the sound of a man fishing.
Overhearing it, I quietly drew a bayonet from my waist.
'I really can't stand perceptive people.'
As it happened, the blade's edge was in fine form, keen and very much alive.
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*****
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