Crossing The East Sea

12 The Test Flight

The Kirogi eventually docked at Wonsan and, acting on Nakajima's instructions, Shinsou hung around the ship's hold, waiting for the four men to come on board and remove the bottled water. He tried approaching them when they appeared so that he could brainwash and interrogate them, but Yoshi leapt at him, growling, and refused to allow him to go anywhere near them.

"It's all right," Shinsou heard Nakajima say quietly from nearby, "The dog certainly seems to be in cahoots with them. Go back to your duties. I'll join Watanabe outside and see if we can't follow them and get more information."

Shinsou didn't hear from Nakajima again that night, but the next morning Watanabe appeared, once more dressed as a government minder, and after he had ushered Shinsou off the ship, said in a businesslike tone, "We're going to a jangmadang at the far end of the town. We managed to get up close to them last night before the hooded man teleported them all away, and I think I've recognised one of them. His name is Baek, and as far as I know, he's into drug dealing. I've seen him occasionally patronising a stall that sells home-brewed alcohol in this particular jangmadang, so we're going to hang around there and see if he shows up."

They flagged down one of the few taxis that were plying the empty streets, and Nakajima, who had joined them, made them invisible once they were inside the car. He told Shinsou to brainwash the taxi driver so that he wouldn't notice that his passengers had vanished.

The jangmadang was much larger than the one near Park Soojin's apartment, and had a far greater variety of goods. Since the famine, these markets had evolved from simple ones into something much more diverse, and North Koreans now had a saying that the only item one could not buy in a jangmadang was a cat's horn. Cosmetics, car batteries, rice cookers, DVD-players, cans of Coca-cola, and illegal DVDs of South Korean and American movies were all available.

Shinsou even saw doctors there, offering their services. Watanabe, seeing his bemused expression, told him that the doctors here couldn't survive on their meagre wages, and although what they were doing was illegal, even the officials who were supposed to crack down on them ended up being forced to receive help from them, because the government health care system had also collapsed during the famine.

Although it was still early in the day, a fair number of stalls were already open, and quite a few customers were making their way around, browsing through the various products. Watanabe noticed a man dressed in the olive-green uniform of a Party cadre, moving from stall to stall.

"See him?" he said to the others, nodding at the Party cadre and shaking his head, "He's a fake. People who set up stalls at jangmadang have to pay a stall tax to keep their slots, and this fellow has been masquerading as a tax-collecting official, cheating the stallholders of their money. We should get Youngjae here to brainwash him and teach him a lesson."

"Not now," said Nakajima, impatiently. He had stopped being invisible, because it was too crowded and people would bump into him. "We've got more important things to do now than play Robin Hood."

They had been walking around for less than ten minutes when Watanabe gave a small grunt. "That's him, Baek. The one in the grey jacket."

As more than a third of the men present were wearing drab grey, this wasn't very helpful, but Shinsou was able to figure out that Watanabe meant a stout man in a dark grey windbreaker, carrying a couple of shopping bags, a few stalls away from them.

They split up and began following Baek separately, trying not to make it too obvious, stopping now and then to browse at a random stall.

Shinsou had moved ahead, and he paused at a stall that was selling street food. It was a very makeshift sort of stall, for the food was simply spread out on a mat on the ground, unlike the other stalls which consisted of proper kiosks. There was injogogi, made from rice, kimchi and soy bean paste, and seokdujeon, which was made by mixing cornmeal powder and water. These were cheap and easy snacks to make, and a lot of housewives tried to garner some extra income by selling them at the market.