T
he wooden chairs in the office of the warehouse were hard and unforgiving on Victor Kornev’s tailbone. He looked at Trang Won Dong, sitting across from him. The man appeared to be quite happy with the chairs as well as his surroundings.
The office was hot, and the only relief came from a single fan that was sitting on the desk making squeaky passes as it oscillated back and forth. Dong seemed ambivalent to the heat. In a more civilized nation, what would have been called a coffee table was actually a small crate that occupied space between the wooden chairs and the desk. On the crate sat an assortment of tasty North Korean dishes. A large container of snakehead fish stew appeared to be the main entree. A bowl of rice and a smaller bowl of fermented cabbage were the side items. A jug of murky water that had specs of silver in it (maybe fish scales) was the nonchilled beverage.
The North Korean bureaucrat appeared to be comfortable. The chairs didn’t seem to bother him one bit. And as he reached over the crate and began to help himself to dinner, Kornev realized that the North Korean was accustomed to it. Accustomed to everything. He was used to the heat. Content with the hard chairs. Pleased with the disgusting food. This hot, hard office was no more out of the norm for Trang than it was for Kornev to eat Russian chilled soups based on kvass, such as tyurya and okroshka. Or even pelmeni, a traditional Russian dish usually made with minced meat filling wrapped in thin dough.
Even so, Kornev couldn’t wait to get out of there. After the last stage of the missile arrived and he got paid, it would be a quick ride over to the Wonsan Airport. From there, Dong would escort Kornev to a nondescript cargo plane, and he would get the hell out of this bizarre country.
Through a mouth full of food, the minister of state security asked Kornev in Korean, “When will the last stage of the missile arrive?”
The problem with that question was that Kornev didn’t know. The route the last missile segment was taking was the most complicated. It entered North Korea at the mouth of the Taedong River, south of Nampo. From there it would continue its route up the narrowing Taedong, past the city of Pyongyang until it reached the fork of the Nam–gang River. At that point, the cargo would be transferred to a smaller ship or barge, and then it would slowly meander its way up the twisting Nam–gang River until it reached the town of Sinpyong. The river voyage would then be over, and the cargo would be transferred to a truck and trailer and then driven fifty kilometers along the Pyongyang–Wonsan Highway until it reached the warehouse.
Kornev was an expert at moving contraband by using many different types of routes and vehicles. But North Korea was a communication nightmare unto itself.
The biggest problem was that cellphone service in North Korea was horrible, and it always had been. Going back to 2011, no mobile phones could dial in or out of the country, and there were no Internet connections. Ninety-four percent of the population had cellphones, yet only fourteen percent of the country had cellphone coverage. That made it difficult to carry out a sensitive and specialized job, like buying and selling weapons. Kornev could handle all the complicated methods of moving materials into North Korea. The spotty cellphone service made it a bitch to monitor the progress of shipments once they had entered North Korean borders.
Kornev dialed the number he had listed for the driver of the diesel rig that was hauling the last missile part. He held his phone high in the air in hopes that the single bar on his phone would become two bars. He pressed the button to activate the speaker on his phone, so Trang Won Dong could hear the voice of whoever answered.
A prerecorded Korean voice came on the line and said, “The party you are trying to reach is unavailable. Please try again at another time or leave a message.”
Kornev listened and shook his head toward Trang. “I have a signal, but the truck driver does not,” Kornev said in his best Korean. He ended the call.
Trang nodded his head in understanding and shoved another spoonful of snakehead fish stew into his mouth.
Victor thought that he looked very happy sitting there eating his Korean crap, sitting on a wooden chair and baking in the office oven. Kornev thought about leaving to drive into Wonsan and maybe get a room at their best establishment, the Dongmyong Hotel. But that was a lot of effort to stay in a hotel that lacked maintenance and only intermittent electricity to power their elevators. But if you caught it on a good electricity day, you might even get to take a hot shower. Victor had been there once before and remembered the smell of the lobby was so bad he had to apply tiger balm to his upper lip to neutralize it. He could find the hotel’s restaurant without a problem by looking for the highest density of flies.
Trang chewed with his mouth open, smacking his lips, making disgusting gooey sounds with his mouth. Kornev groaned slightly as he leaned forward and stretched his back. His ass felt like hamburger. He was tired and wanted to sleep. He was hungry and didn’t want to die by eating what was sitting on the crate. He just wanted the last missile part to arrive, so he could get his bag of diamonds and get the hell out of North Korea.
His mind drifted back to his hotel stay in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia—at the beautiful Volna Hotel. And he also thought about the beautiful Tonya Merkalov he had met. He closed his eyes and imagined lying there in the air-conditioned room on the big overstuffed mattress with the lovely redhead in his arms. He could almost smell her female scent and feel her soft white skin against his—
“Where’s the truck?” the North Korean grunted again.
Kornev opened his eyes just in time to see a small wad of rice and fish fall out of the man’s mouth, landing on the dirty floor. Kornev felt his stomach turn.
“Where in the hell was the damn truck?” Kornev thought to himself.
Sometimes his job really sucked.