Whispers of Refuge Box Set

CHAPTER 15-2

Juliette closed her eyes. She frowned in concentration, trying to recall the last song the Secret Seminary students sang before they left. Was it How Great Thou Art? The Old Rugged Cross? She hated not remembering. Why hadn’t she paid more attention? Juliette took a deep breath. She couldn’t think about the graduates at this time of the day. Tomorrow she could wake up and begin a whole new sixteen-hour worry session anew. For now, she had to focus on happier things.

Like Kennedy. Juliette had gotten an email from her daughter just a few hours earlier. She was off to take another midterm. It was chemistry, one of Kennedy’s strongest subjects. She wasn’t too nervous, or if she was she didn’t show it in her note. Juliette wished they could talk more by phone. She could hear in Kennedy’s voice what she couldn’t always read between the lines of her emails. But with the time difference, catching her daughter in her dorm was like playing a Vegas slot machine. The Sterns always had to be careful on their home phone, too. With the Chinese government, you could never be sure if your lines were tapped. Juliette couldn’t talk to Kennedy about the graduates. She couldn’t refer to them directly in her emails, even though Kennedy had known them all before she flew out to Massachusetts.

There Juliette went again, thinking about the Secret Seminary students. What was happening to Hannah right now? Was she still safe? Juliette and Roger had discussed Hannah’s fate over the course of many a late night. She was the youngest of all the graduates, but she proved to be an amazing Bible scholar. She was as innocent as the gentlest of doves, but she certainly hadn’t attained the shrewdness of a serpent.

“I just don’t know if she’s going to be able to make it out there,” Roger had told Juliette several weeks before graduation. “She’s got this notion that everything is so black and white. I’m just not sure it’s safe sending her out with the rest of them.”

“You know it would tear her up to stay behind.” It was true, but there was just no telling what kind of horrible suffering the National Security Agency would put a young, inexperienced girl through if she were caught. Even now, Juliette wondered if letting Hannah return was really the right choice. Hannah and Kennedy were about the same age, and there’s no way she would have considered sending her own daughter across the border. Why had she agreed to let Hannah go?

Juliette readjusted under her sheets and tried to think about what she would do the next day. Roger’s office needed some serious organizing, but she would have to wake up feeling a lot more rested to make much difference. She didn’t roll over when Roger wrapped his arms around her. Even after he fell asleep, she stayed awake and listened to his quiet snoring for over an hour.

He was already gone by the time Juliette woke up the next morning. She turned over on her side and slipped her hand under the pillow. There were a few pieces of Godiva left. She didn’t need them right now, but just knowing where they were brought an added level of comfort. She thought about the day ahead of her. For the first time in almost a year, there would be no Secret Seminary classes. No prayer meetings after breakfast. No Bible study over lunch. Juliette would miss the sound of the hymns the students sang in the den. She would miss the inspiration and boldness she gleaned from the refugees and their stalwart faith.

She tried to figure out what time it was on the East Coast. Would Kennedy be asleep? Getting ready for bed? Juliette didn’t even know when her daughter went to sleep anymore. She hadn’t talked to Kennedy in almost a week. Was she eating properly? How were her classes going?

She knew it was silly to worry about her daughter. Kennedy was safe in her dorm. Juliette’s head ached when she thought about the strangers who came to the house the night before. She would have to tell Roger, but then he would only worry more. She wasn’t ready to think about that quite yet. She stayed in bed for almost another hour. Her excuse was that it would give her a chance to pray for the Secret Seminary students. By the time she emerged for breakfast, her entire Godiva stash was gone.

Eve didn’t say anything when Juliette came downstairs, but she scurried to prepare a late breakfast. Sometimes Juliette wished she didn’t have a house staff to wait on her. She couldn’t even divert her mind by cooking. She wasn’t hungry, but she figured her system could use a little protein this morning. She watched Eve working and finally asked, “Do you know how to make fudge?”

Eve stood over a pan of eggs and frowned. “Fudge?”

Juliette tried to think of the phrase in Korean, but didn’t even know if the word had a translation. “It’s a dessert. Made out of chocolate.”

Eve shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

Juliette beamed. “I’ll make a shopping list.”

Six hours later Juliette sat in front of an empty plate, but her taste buds weren’t as satisfied as she had hoped. Somehow, it just didn’t seem right to be eating fudge in the middle of the afternoon when the Secret Seminary graduates were back in North Korea, where sweets and delicacies were reserved for the wealthy in Pyongyang, for the Dear Leader and his cadre of loyal assistants. Juliette reassured herself that her students would be in North Korea whether she ate fudge or not, but that only assuaged the guilt a little.

She and Roger had argued back and forth for weeks about his plan to cut off all contact with the graduates once they returned home. In Roger’s mind, keeping communication lines open would only make things more dangerous for everyone involved. Juliette imagined facing a lifetime of uncertainty, never knowing what happened to Hannah, Simon, and the others, and sometimes had to shut her eyes and deliberately force the air in and out of her constricting lungs.

She carried another piece of fudge to her desk and read that day’s email from her daughter. It was newsy and characteristically chipper in tone. Kennedy talked about her schedule and her impression of her professors and classmates. Her roommate was a thespian and was rehearsing like crazy for a modernized version of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night set in Times Square on New Year’s Eve. Her resident advisor had a boyfriend from Qatar, and Kennedy’s lab partner in chemistry was an international student from Kenya. Chemistry was a cinch compared to the Advanced Placement class she took at the Girls Academy in Yanji, but calculus was — in Kennedy’s own words — a “beast.” Her teacher’s aide was from Seoul, and sometimes Kennedy thought she’d do better in class if he actually spoke Korean so she didn’t have to decipher his accented English. Juliette smiled at her daughter’s descriptions. Kennedy had spent over half her life living in China, went to a school where the classes were all taught in British English, and came home to speak Korean with the Secret Seminary students. In some ways, Kennedy’s childhood as the daughter of an American businessman in Yanji was quite similar to Juliette’s own upbringing in South Korea as the ambassador’s daughter.

Juliette dabbed her mouth with an embroidered napkin and smiled. No mention of boys, besides the RA’s foreign love interest. Staring at each word over the top of her Prada frames, Juliette tried to determine if her daughter was lonely. It was hard to tell. Wherever she was, Kennedy drew people to her like flowers attract bees. She was always popular, whether in the States or at the All Girls Academy. But in all her time in Yanji, Kennedy never had a best friend. Juliette hoped and waited for her to find a compatible spirit, a soul mate of sorts, but her daughter seemed to enjoy a plethora of superficial friendships without letting any take root, deepen, and grow.

Juliette sighed. In her head, she heard Roger’s voice telling her to stop worrying so much. Kennedy was a good girl. No, a great girl. She was a model student, and the years she spent in Yanji gave her a depth uncharacteristic of most American college freshmen. Juliette was proud of her daughter and missed her fiercely. She and Roger had talked about bringing Kennedy back to Yanji for Christmas break, but it was a long and expensive flight. Kennedy had a standing invitation to spend summers and holidays with her aunt in Maryland, but Juliette still wished her daughter didn’t live so far away.

“One of the hazards of mission work,” as Roger would say. Juliette never bought into that argument but didn’t bother correcting her husband. After all, Kennedy would still be six thousand miles from home if the Sterns were in China simply to run their printing business as their visas claimed. Juliette sighed and turned off her computer. She would respond to Kennedy’s email later when she felt a little more upbeat. She adjusted her glasses and reached for the last piece of fudge.

***

* * * *

“We found the spy, Levi. He was right at Hoeryong where you told us.”

Agent Ko let out a sigh at the director’s report. His words were about the closest thing to a compliment any special agent could hope for. The director was ancient, having fought off Japanese imperialists as a young boy. He had worked his way up the Party ranks even though his ancestors before him had all been uneducated peasants. Ko, like most special agents, had two main goals in life: to help the Party achieve its glorious goals of reuniting the entire Korean Peninsula, and to keep from getting hauled off to prison camp for upsetting the director.

“Our initial interrogation with Levi led us to another one of the Yanji spies, the girl called Hannah,” the director reported. “What can you tell us about her?”

Ko laughed and then stopped, remembering the director’s distaste for humor. “She’ll be the easiest of the lot to break.”

The director was silent for a moment. “Actually ...” he let the word draw out, and Ko’s hands began to sweat. “She’s proving to be more difficult than we expected. She’s been trained.”

This time, the guffaw escaped automatically. “Trained? Only if you call sitting in a den listening to a fat American ‘training.’”

“What do we need to do to break her?” the director demanded.

Ko thought about the petite little Secret Seminary disciple and knew just how to get to her. “Find the one I mentioned to you earlier. The one called Simon.”