A Small Revolution Read online

  67

  On the plane with Serena that day, flying back to Weston from New York, I regretted not taking a chance and driving with Lloyd to your house in North Dakota. I should have let him pick me up and gone with him. We should have at least tried. And if that didn’t work, we’d figure out something in New York. I had no further plans beyond something as vague as that, but I still regretted not trying. We’d figure it out. Me and Lloyd. As simple and as thoughtless as that. Silly girl. But part of me knew we didn’t have the money or the plan.

  I listened to Serena talk on and on about where she was going to tour, and I finally snapped at her, “Why are you at Weston? You sound like you should be doing what your dad says instead of pretending to be a college student.” She didn’t reply, just stared at me for a few seconds and then turned to the window.

  What was I doing with her? Playing her sidekick as she played around with things that didn’t matter. How did her music matter in the face of what had happened to you? Why wouldn’t she help me find you?

  I called Lloyd when I returned to my dorm, and this time the phone rang and rang and rang, and I pictured the empty phone socket, the cord wrapped around the body of the phone in his mother’s purse somewhere—wherever she was. Lloyd was a prisoner in his own house. When the phone rang back in my room a few minutes later, I thought it was him, that we were on the same wavelength, as he said, but it was my mother asking me where I’d been. I explained about Serena. “You didn’t tell me you were going to New York,” she said, panic in her voice. “Where else are you going without telling me? Just like Willa. You’re supposed to be studying.”

  “It was interesting, the radio station.” I tried to spin it the way she might appreciate it. “Serena is a famous musician. She’ll tour Korea. Ask your sister about her.”

  “Are you planning to go back to Korea? There have been more protests—it’s not a safe place, Yoona. Your father won’t allow it.”

  “No, why would you think Korea?”

  “You’ve only been talking about going back there.”

  “Maybe I need to go to North Dakota.”

  “Why? What’s in North Dakota? Are you quitting school to join a commune like your sister?”

  “I’ll call you tomorrow,” I said and hung up the phone, and then I didn’t go to my classes. Instead I holed up in the library, combing through Korean newspapers, looking for evidence. And I stopped at the job board. Maybe I could make enough money for Lloyd and me to buy our own tickets to North Dakota.

  68

  LOVE, LOVE, LOVE. ALL I’VE EVER GIVEN YOU WAS LOVE. His pacing is leading him farther and farther away from the shotgun. If he puts the handgun down, we could have a chance.

  He whirls and charges me. EVERYTHING WE’VE BEEN THROUGH AND YOU’RE STILL LYING TO ME, YOONA.

  69

  In the middle of the night, there was a knock on my door, and I opened it to find Lloyd on the other side. “She wouldn’t let me call you,” he said and pushed past me into the room. “I scraped enough money together for gas, but the bridge tolls are going to mail a bill to the house. I didn’t know how that was going to work. I thought they’d stop me.” He paced back and forth, looking at the floor, his hands in his hair.

  “Okay, it’s okay.” I closed the door and urged him to sit on the bed. “Lloyd, you’re all right. You’re here.”

  “I remembered something.” He sat beside me, his arm around me, and whispered as if someone could hear us. “Tongsu Cho works at a restaurant called Little Pan in Itaewon. We can reach him there.”

  I leaned back and spoke in a normal volume. “What happened to your face?”

  He had a scratch on his cheek that he traced now with his finger. It hadn’t scabbed over yet. He leaned forward, still talking in a whisper. “She kicked me out.”

  “Did she do that to you?”

  “This? No, it’s from something else. But I found the number for the restaurant.” He fished in his pocket, standing up to reach deep, and came up with a scrap of paper that he unfolded to show me a number starting with a Korean area code. He handed it to me, sitting back down.

  “We can call from Underwood, the finance building. That’s how Serena calls her dad.”

  “Let’s go.” He looked at his watch. “It’s five p.m. in Seoul. The restaurant will be open.”

  I took out a pair of jeans and turned away from him before I climbed into them.

  “You don’t have to be shy with me,” he said.

  “What did you say?”

  “Oh shit, that came out wrong. I meant, Hey, we’ve got to figure out how to call this number.”

  I finished buttoning up my jeans and pulled a sweater over my head with my back still turned to him. “I don’t know how we can get into Dean Olin’s office. There’s a larger office where the secretaries sit and then the counter where they handle students who stop by. Outside of that is a larger door.”

  “I’ve opened locked doors before.”

  “How do you learn something like that?”

  “Two stores down from my dad’s shop is Mr. Kelly’s locksmith shop. Mr. Kelly liked me hanging around, so he showed me a few things. But Mr. Kelly sold my dad the safe in his shop, so I can’t open that one. I mean, I tried, but he made sure I couldn’t open that one. Fuck Mr. Kelly.”

  I buttoned my coat and then held up my dorm room key. “Could you open the lock on my door?”

  “Probably, maybe, but I never tried. I wouldn’t. Plus you’ve got a dead bolt.”

  “Right. Anyway, you don’t need to.”

  “Exactly, so there you go.”

  “So you can unlock most doors?”

  “We’ll see—is Underwood the brownstone one with the green door?”

  “Near the main gate.”

  “Thought so. Let’s go.” He held the door open for me.

  “Do you need any tools or anything?” I said as I turned out the light.

  “We’ll stop at my car.”

  “Good thing your parents didn’t take that away.”

  “My mom couldn’t get rid of me then. She’d rather I drive far away. Probably get in a car accident so she never has to see me again.”

  “You don’t mean that.”

  “It’s that or having me locked up.”

  We walked down the steps, and he closed the door so quietly behind us that I had to look back to see if it had closed after all.

  In his car, he reached under his seat and took out a brown paper bag, fished around, and pulled out a couple of bobby pins and a flashlight.

  He actually did it. He used two bobby pins to unlock the side door to Underhill and then used the same pins to open each of the doors inside. My heart leaped. But Lloyd was cautious. I walked around while he called. It was the best chance we’d had yet, and I hoped, I hoped so much, that Tongsu Cho would know something about the men who had taken you and Lloyd to that meeting that night, would know where the men had gone. You had to be with them somewhere.

  Dean Olin’s office smelled musty, and I found socks under his leather chair. I wondered if Serena knew about those. Lloyd dialed quickly and got the international operator to patch him through to the restaurant, and I heard him ask for Tongsu Cho. Then I heard him describe what he looked like. He held the phone away from him and said to me that the hostess was going back to the kitchen to see if anyone by that name worked there. “Maybe he’s using an alias,” I suggested.

  “Why would he do that?”

  “Yes, hello?” he said in English. The hostess must have returned to the phone. Then in Korean, “Yes, it’s not a good connection. Could I speak to someone else in the kitchen who might know him? It’s really important. Yes, family matter, urgent.”

  He listened some more and then he thanked her and said he’d call tomorrow. “Different staff tonight for a special event. She said to try tomorrow.”

  70

  I had a dream where a doctor was holding up a graph of your heartbeats. She held it up for me to see, on a large
eleven-by-fourteen-inch piece of paper, and she pointed to the parts that showed you were alive and then the straight line where you weren’t. “Right here,” she said. “This is the moment he died.” I cried for you. I cried and cried and cried and couldn’t stop crying for you even after I sat up in bed and realized I was in my dorm room. And Lloyd held me and said, “We have to find him, that’s all, then these nightmares will stop. I have them too.”

  71

  LOVE, LOVE, LOVE, LOVE. WHY DON’T I DESERVE LOVE? WE HAD A PLAN, YOONA. WE WERE GOING TO FIND JAESUNG. WHY DIDN’T YOU NEED ME ANYMORE?

  “You’re right, Lloyd. I didn’t know what I was doing. But I do now. I do.”

  There’s anguish on his face.

  I continue. “It’s not too late, and Sax is listening to you. You’ve got what you wanted. You have proof, and you can free Jaesung.”

  HE’S LYING TO ME.

  “He’s trying to help. Come on, if they weren’t, they’d be in here by now. You let Daiyu go, and you’ve shown you’re reasonable. That’s what matters. And you’re a good friend to Jaesung.”

  HIS ONLY FRIEND.

  “His only friend. I’ll tell him everything you did to free him. He’ll know. Every detail.”

  I’VE GOT TO GET HIM FREED. THEY’RE NEVER GOING TO LET ME TALK TO THE PRESIDENT. I’VE GOT TO DO IT MYSELF. FLY OVER THERE MYSELF. Lloyd picks up the phone and barks into it. I WANT THAT CAR NOW. AND I WANT A HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS. IT’S A HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS NOW.

  “I’ll need a few more minutes. The plane is taking a while, Lloyd.”

  Lloyd pulls the phone to the window, looks out. WHO’S THE MAN WITH THE RED HAT? HE WASN’T THERE BEFORE. AND WHAT’S THAT ARMY TRUCK DOING? IF YOU’RE THINKING ABOUT—BACK OFF WITH THAT TEAR GAS. THERE’S A PREGNANT GIRL IN HERE, REMEMBER.

  “Stay calm, Lloyd,” I call over to him.

  LOOK, I KNOW WHAT I SEE. DON’T TELL ME WHAT I SEE. I KNOW WHAT MY EYES ARE LOOKING AT.

  “Let me see, Lloyd. Do I have your permission to see?” I offer and approach the window when he waves me over.

  The light is blinding. I shield my eyes and see dozens of police cars, more than I imagined. Their lights are spinning round and round. There are people in uniforms and some with their hands up, holding back people with microphones and vans with antennae on their roofs. In a space up front is a man looking at our window.

  “You’ve seen too many cop shows, Lloyd. I want to work with you. These things take time.”

  AREN’T YOU TIRED OF SAYING THAT? I’M SICK OF HEARING IT.

  “Look, once you let the other three girls walk out like you did with Daiyu, I’ll have the car with the money left outside. We can continue to look for your friend. I promise you I’ll keep working on that. He matters to you, doesn’t he, Lloyd?”

  NO. I’M NOT LETTING ANYONE GO. I’VE DONE ENOUGH.

  “It’s not me, Lloyd,” Sax says. “My superior officers thought we were out of time. Believe me, I’m on your side. The pregnancy news will buy you more time. I’m glad for the pregnant girl, believe it or not. I am. It changes everything we usually do. You’re right. No tear gas, not even considered here. What about money? I can get you more. A hundred thousand won’t last you long. Especially when the girl is pregnant. Is she all right, the pregnant girl? What’s her name? Hold on—getting word on something now. Let me get the car, and I’ll call you back. Just wait. Don’t do anything, we’re working this out, Lloyd. Okay?”

  GET ME THE CAR. He puts down the handset and pumps the shotgun. The sound is distinct. Detective Sax’s voice jumps. “Lloyd, don’t be hasty now. You’ve come this far.”

  72

  We tried again the next night. On the third night we broke into Dean Olin’s office, a man who said his name was Tongsu Cho came on the line. “You remember us, the kids from America. You met us on the student tour and then again in Seoul. You took us to a meeting, but you didn’t get in the car with us. You sent us to meet these men, for the rally, you remember?” Lloyd pressed Tongsu, repeated himself, agreed that the connection was bad.

  I leaned in, and Lloyd put his arm around me and held the receiver between us. “You remember, don’t you?” Now we’d find out who had taken you.

  The man said he had met some students when he worked on the tour, but that was all. “I just arrived in Seoul this week for work,” he said. “How did you know? Do you have news about my father?”

  “What happened to your father?”

  “I thought you might know. I heard he was sick. I don’t know any American students in Seoul.”

  “We met you, remember in the kitchen on the tour? And you told us about the men losing their fingers in the factory. You lost a finger in the factory. My friend was missing part of his finger, but not from the factory.”

  “I’m not sure I know what you mean.”

  “How can you not know? You talked to us, and you talked to my friend. There was a demonstration.”

  “I’m sorry, but I have to return. It’s work hours. Good luck finding your friend. Don’t call me again here. I can lose my job.”

  “But wait, you—we need your help, wait. Wait, hello, Tongsu Cho? I met you—we met you in Korea.”

  “I don’t know who you are,” Tongsu said.

  “How can he not remember us?” I said.

  “Shhh . . . ,” Lloyd said to me.

  A sickening feeling settled in my stomach. Suddenly, there were footsteps, loud ones, a light came on in the hall. I turned off the flashlight and pulled Lloyd down. We crouched behind the desk, the receiver in his hand. We stayed down until they faded and waited another half hour before we let ourselves out.

  The next day Lloyd wouldn’t look me in the eye.

  “Lloyd, what’s going on?” I caught up to him.

  “Let’s walk. I might be followed.”

  “You’re scaring me.”

  “They can put listening devices anywhere,” he said, surveying the tree branches above us. It was a maple with yellowing leaves, but still full.

  “I’m remembering more and more. My head hurts like it’s going to burst open, and I can’t take it anymore,” he said, holding the sides of his head. He ran off.

  I followed him and called to him. He kept looking over his shoulder and pivoting around other students. Finally, he slowed enough for me to catch up to him. And then he proceeded to tell me about a Korean man who had been hanging around his block in Queens. The man followed Lloyd to his parents’ grocery market and asked people in neighboring shops about him. “They told me he asked. How stupid is he to ask them? He wanted to know if I had friends. Isn’t that a weird question? Mr. Lubuni told him to leave me alone. And then he told me what the man said. And he told my parents too.”

  “You could go to the police with that if you have Mr. Lubuni to verify it.”

  “The CIA? Is the CIA following me, Yoona?”

  “But you said the man was Korean. The KCIA?”

  “I think I lost them when I came up here. I think it’s safe here. I don’t feel watched up here. Not as much. I really don’t.”

  “How could you tell he was following you in the city?”

  “It was the same man. I saw the same man. I can feel his eyes on me.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

  “I was trying to protect you. I hoped we’d find Jaesung before this. Where could he be? What are they doing to him, Yoona?” He was looking everywhere but at me.

  “I don’t know, but we’ll find out. We can go to the police and tell them about the man who’s following you. What’s he look like?”

  “You sound as if you don’t believe me.”

  “I do. I don’t know what you mean. You’re not making any sense.”

  “That’s what they want us to believe. But you and I know Tongsu Cho exists. Maybe it was another man named Tongsu Cho. Maybe there’s another restaurant called Little Pan, or it’s a wrong number.”

  “So many people in Korea have the same name. We have t
o keep looking.”

  “Just don’t question me about everything as if you don’t believe me.” He looked at me then, his mouth set in a hard line, and I didn’t know if he recognized who I was.

  “The man who was following me in the city, he’s here. He walked right past you, looked like he was listening to what you were saying, and he’s circled around again. He’s wearing a red hat.” Lloyd was mumbling again. It was the next day, and he refused to let me leave his side, even to go to the bathroom. We were on our way to the lunch truck and the post office. I hoped my mother had been able to send me more money.

  “Where?” There were people ahead, alongside, and behind us, all walking away from the dining hall. “I don’t see anyone in a red hat. Korean man?”

  “Don’t be so obvious. Sweatshirt and jeans, red sweatshirt and jeans.”

  I looked around. He yanked me back around. “Just walk.” I hadn’t seen anyone in a red sweatshirt. I saw a girl in a red T-shirt and a boy in a black shirt and red shorts, but no one wearing what Lloyd had said.

  He was talking again. “He’ll expect us to go to this meeting. Especially if you told that girl where we were going. Did you tell her about Korea Society?” Without waiting for my reply, he added, “You did. I knew it. We can’t go now. You’ve got to stop telling people our plans. What did you say, word for word?”

  “I didn’t know he was on campus. You should have told me. Why are you talking about Korea Society? We agreed we weren’t going to go to that.”

  “These people aren’t obvious, Yoona. I wasn’t sure until he walked right by you. I wondered if you knew him, and then he walked past. Really casual. And if I wasn’t looking for him, I would have missed him. The way they coordinated that attack so I couldn’t get out of the car. The way I was locked in that car. We have to find him.”

  “Korean man, how tall? You have to tell me something. Does he look like a grad student? Older?”

  “But there might be more than one. There were two in every car. I didn’t want to be split up. I told Jaesung I didn’t have a good feeling about it, but he wanted to follow along. He’s too trusting. They walked me between them like they thought I’d try to escape.”