The Revisionists (49 page)

“Hello?” It was her sister’s voice, in their adopted language of Korean.

“It’s me, it’s Sari,” she said, speaking in Bahasa again.

“Sari! The world traveler finally calls!”

She hadn’t called either of her sisters since leaving—the Shims wouldn’t allow it, and Sang Hee said she’d check the phone records and would know.

“How are you?” Sari asked.

“Fine. You know. How about you? America’s too exciting for you to check in with your sisters until now?”

“No, I’m… I’ve been having a hard time here,” Sari started, and whatever she tried to say next got caught in the tightness of her throat.

“What did you say?”

The connection was bad and there were weird delays, making them speak over each other or wait at the wrong times, but still—it was her sister, it was someone other than Leo speaking her language for the first time in months.

She tried to tell her sister what had happened, at least vaguely. That her job was a bad one, her employers cruel. Had Lastri received any money in the mail?

“What are you talking about?”

“They said they would send some of my pay to you.”

“No, nothing.” There was another voice in the background, one of her roommates maybe, or perhaps Lastri was out in the city chatting on a sidewalk. “Wait, hold on a second.”

Lastri didn’t seem to notice how choked up her younger sister was, due to either the pauses and fuzz of international telephony or her own distractedness. Sari had been on the verge of sobbing, but she held it in. She wasn’t sure if her sister was boarding a bus or kicking a boyfriend out of bed while Sari stood here gripping a receiver that didn’t seem to realize how important this call was.

Leo had told her she wouldn’t be able to call her family any more once she was settled in the new place, at least not for a very long time.

“Sorry, I’m back. I have to go to work, though. Can you call later?”

She and Lastri hadn’t been very close their last year in Korea. There had been a boy, a mutual crush; neither had won him and each had blamed the other. Besides, Lastri was always spending her free time with her older friends, and the kid sister was not welcome. They’d spoken less and less. A ticket to a job in America had seemed a welcome diversion from Sari’s stunted life in Seoul.

“Sure.”

“You’re okay, though? Your exciting American life isn’t too hard?”

Sari sucked in her breath. “I’m fine. And Kade?”

“Oh, she’s the usual. New boy, new job. I’ll tell you about it later.”

She said good-bye and the line went quiet. To Sari, it felt like shucking off an old jacket that didn’t fit right anymore. Leaving her standing there cold, and alone.

A smartly dressed white couple passed on the sidewalk. Their arms were linked, but they were both having conversations on their cells, as if they were talking to each other on the phones. The woman was beautiful and blond, and looked concerned as she made eye contact with the crying foreigner. Sari could hear them talking as they passed, their two conversations like awkward dance partners, until they turned a corner, disappearing.

After wiping her eyes so she’d look presentable, or at least not noticeable (she hoped), she walked back to the main road. What should she do now?

Stop pouting. I didn’t raise pouters.

It wasn’t like her mother to come to her while Sari was awake. For a moment it made her question herself, wonder if she was sleeping after all, if this was just a long and involved dream. What a wonderful thought.

I’m not pouting, Mother.

Don’t expect your sisters to come in and save you. They’re busy enough fending for themselves, you know that.

Yes, Mother.

You’re doing pretty well for yourself, all things considered.

Alone in a city I don’t know, with people trying to hunt me down?

What did I say about the pouting? I meant that all those things have gone wrong, yes, but you’re still all right. You’re alive, you have food in your belly.

You always had low standards, Mother.

I shouldn’t have mentioned bellies. You’re hungry, aren’t you? That American isn’t doing such a great job taking care of you. Maybe you need to do more for yourself. Here, turn right. Walk another block.

Where are you taking me?

You’re hungry, right? Now turn left. From here, you’re on your own. And stop thinking about the riots. It happened. I’m glad it was me instead of you. Okay? So don’t even think about feeling guilty. It defeats the purpose, doesn’t it, if I saved you only to have you mope forever about the fact that I’m gone and you’re alone? That’s why I’m sick of the pouting. Now look, down the street.

At the end of the block she saw a neon sign in two languages, one of which was Korean. She walked closer—it was a restaurant. And though she was sick to death of that cuisine, she at least would be able to read the menu.

A gawky, thin Korean girl who couldn’t have been older than sixteen met her at the door and said something in English. Sari asked, in Korean, if she could have a table for one. The girl looked surprised that this clearly non-Korean person spoke her language, but she simply nodded and took her to a table in the middle of the small, dimly lit place.

Sari could indeed read the menu, and when the girl returned with a blessedly warm cup of tea (would she ever not be cold in this country?), Sari ordered some
bibimbap
she could barely afford. The girl eyed her for a moment. Her hair was long and she wasn’t pretty, and she seemed to know this and wore a loud shade of blue eyeliner and lots of jangly necklaces and bracelets as if to distinguish herself in other ways. Her black blouse had ridiculous, poofy billows at the end of the sleeves. She must be the owner’s daughter, Sari thought, sneaking in her rebellion where she can.

“How come you speak Korean?” the girl asked.

“I used to live in Seoul.”

“Huh. I was born there. We moved when I was seven.”

She seemed to be the only waitress, and when a white couple came in, she walked over to seat them. Sari tried not to think about her sisters or the Shims or Leo, tried to just take in the smells and the slightly familiar decorations, reveling in the feeling of being out with a little money to spend. She listened for her mother’s voice, but she seemed to have returned to Sari’s dream world.

Minutes later, as Sari was eating, the girl stopped by again. She said something in English before remembering that Sari didn’t speak the language, then translated, asking how the food was.

“It’s great, thank you.”

“You don’t speak English but you know Korean. Where are you from?”

“Indonesia. I’ve moved around a lot.”

“Yeah, everyone here has.”

“Here America, or here Washington?”

The girl shrugged. “I don’t know. Kids in my high school, in Springfield, are from all over. I’ve been here almost ten years, which makes me really, really American compared to most of
them
.”

Sari wanted to ask the girl if she liked it here, but she realized what a strange question that was. Instead, she asked, “So, you work here but you go to school too?”

 “Of course. It’s not like I’m going to be a waitress all my life.” She didn’t seem to think her comments would insult a slightly older person who worked even more menial jobs than hers.

“What are you studying to be?”

“I don’t know. I always thought I’d be a doctor. But then this year we dissected little pigs and it was really, really gross. The insides and stuff.” Then she looked at Sari’s half-finished plate. “Oh, sorry. Bad to talk about. So now I’m thinking lawyer.”

More customers walked in and the girl smiled before leaving Sari to her dinner.

Sari had already noticed, on the bottom of the mirror behind the small, unmanned bar, a hand-lettered sign advertising in Korean the need for a dishwasher. She’d had such jobs in restaurants before, not that experience would be necessary. Even in this vast foreign city there were tiny islands she could navigate. She wondered how much danger she was really in, wondered if Leo was exaggerating, if he just wanted to get rid of her. She wondered if that goofy young waitress really would be an American lawyer in a few years.

31.

T
roy Jones pounded on Leo’s door just as Leo was putting on his jacket to go out and obtain Sari’s papers.

Leo didn’t know who it was at first. He walked to his bedroom closet, and beneath the hanging oxfords he found the metal case where he stored the gun that he, as a resident of the District of Columbia, was not legally allowed to own. He turned off the safety, fed a round into the chamber, and walked to the door.

He put his eye to the peephole and saw Troy Jones through the thick glass.

“What do you want?” Leo asked.

“There are things I need to tell you.” Jones seemed out of breath, as if he’d run up the stairs.

“Just you, or you and your gun?”

Jones didn’t answer at first. “I’m sorry if I frightened you before.”

The man sounded genuinely apologetic. Leo was leaning with his right hand pressed against the dead-bolted metal door, his gun pointed at the ceiling.

“How’d you get past the doorman?”

“I have identification. It isn’t real, but he fell for it.”

“Whatever you need to tell me, you can tell me through the door.”

“All right. All right. There’s something that needs to be stopped. Needs to be done, I mean. But I can’t do it. I’m going to tell you, and hopefully it’s something you can do.”

“Why would I do something for you?”

“I’m going to give you some information. You’re free to do something with it or not. There’s nothing I can force anyone to do, do you understand? I’m just supposed to protect things. But I think I’ve been protecting the wrong things.” He shook his head as if arguing with himself. The distorted picture Leo could see through the wall-eyed glass made Jones look even more disheveled and confused than he sounded. His hands were at his sides, and by his feet was a black briefcase. His jacket was unzipped. Nothing in the world would convince Leo to open that door. “I know I’m not making much sense.”

“No, you’re not, Troy.”

“You know my cover. Interesting. But you don’t understand. Listen. There’s an organization, a network. It’s called Enhanced Awareness. It develops systems, ways to track a population. Intelligence software, filtering methods. Ways to watch people. They sell their services to different countries, both allies and foes. They’re in the process of closing deals with North Korea and Syria, among other hostile nations. The diplomat you’ve been watching is a go-between for North Korean intelligence. You said you were following his wife, but I have no information on her. Nothing in my databases. Enhanced Awareness will make the deal through
him,
and then these dictatorships will have access to information and methodologies that will allow them to more closely monitor their people—and people in other countries. It will strengthen their belligerent regimes, and something… very bad will happen as a result.”

Leo tried to fit this into what he already knew. Hyun Ki was a diplomat with family connections in the telecom business, which made him uniquely positioned to close deals between high-tech surveillance firms and government entities. But why work for North Korea, his own country’s bitter rival? He’d even married a woman who, if the stories were true, had lost everything to that Orwellian state. Still, Leo knew that people made stupid or staggeringly selfish decisions; perhaps the money was too good for Shim to refuse, or perhaps he was a North Korean spy who’d married Sang Hee only for cover.

“Why are you telling me this?” Leo asked.

“Maybe because I wanted to put your life in danger.” And with that, Jones smiled, his lips skewed and almost leering through the glass. “The last person to know about this was a journalist, Karthik Chaudhry, who’d been tracking Enhanced Awareness and other intelligence contractors. He’d received certain… anonymous tips on the company’s business strategies. You know of Mr. Chaudhry?”

Anonymous tips from whom,
Leo wondered,
Jones himself? How else could he know this?
“I’ve read the news stories.”

“Your news stories will never have the full information. Your news stories only know that he disappeared. He disappeared on his way to meet a source who didn’t show up, and instead he was met by certain employees of Enhanced Awareness. He will never be heard from again. I was sent here because this is the best opportunity to disrupt the events. Due to some… security breaches, the company almost gets stopped before it can do real damage. But the company also employs some men with experience from
your
former employer, Mr. Hastings, men who know how to eliminate problems. They eliminated Chaudhry, and later tonight they’re going to eliminate a few more people, including an activist named T.J. Trenton.”

Leo’s head buzzed with the not altogether pleasant sensation of disparate dendrites connecting from wrong sides of his brain.
T.J.?
“What exactly are they going to do?”

“Mr. Trenton and his associates were using a rundown house in Northeast Washington as a home base. The men from Enhanced Awareness showed up, shot them, and distributed enough drug paraphernalia to make it look like a drug buy gone bad. It helps that most of Mr. Trenton’s friends indulge in a lot of marijuana. The D.C. police never thought to question it.”

“Wait, this happened already?”

“Y—no, not yet.” Jones shook his head. “In a few hours. I’m using the wrong tense, sorry. It’s a little difficult for me to explain.”

Leo took a breath, tried to make sense of this. “If this is legit, why aren’t you doing anything about it?”

“I am doing something about it.” His voice was raised and he glared into the peephole. “I’m telling you.”

“But why
me?
You don’t know anything about me.”

“I know a lot about you, Leonard Hastings. You’re in my files. Your future is not bright. This information might change that.”