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“Choi left him,” Mom interjects, “after she found out he’d fathered a son with a starlet half her age.”

  I pause. Mr. Park’s recitation didn’t include that detail.

  “Sorry,” Mom says. “Continue.”

  “Yeah, OK . . . So Shin’s career was on the rocks, and then he got in trouble with the government. South Korea in those days was better than the North, but it was still basically a military dictatorship, and Shin pissed off the state censors. They took away his filmmaking license. By the time the North Koreans came after him, he was close to bankruptcy.

  “They decided to use his ex-wife as a lure. They got Choi Eun-hee to Hong Kong with a phony job offer and kidnapped her, and when Shin came looking for her, they grabbed him too. Once they got him back to Pyongyang, they tried treating him nicely at first. But Shin wouldn’t play ball—he kept trying to escape—so Kim Jong-il had him thrown into prison. They put him in a special kind of solitary where you spend sixteen hours a day sitting cross-legged on the floor, and anytime you move or make a sound, the guards beat you. Three and a half years of that, and then Kim Jong-il gave Shin a choice: Live in a nice house with Choi Eun-hee and make movies on an unlimited budget, or go back to solitary for good.

  “Shin took the film job. For the next three years he was Kim Jong-il’s pet director, and Choi was his leading lady. The movies they made were better than anything North Korea had ever done before. Some of them won prizes. That’s how Shin and Choi finally got away: Kim was so happy that he let them travel abroad to attend film festivals. They slipped their guards in Vienna and escaped.”

  “Did you watch any of the films?” Mom asks. “You know they’re all on YouTube now.”

  I nod. “I checked out one of them.”

  “Let me guess. Pulgasari?”

  “Of course Pulgasari.” The last film Shin directed before escaping Kim’s clutches, Pulgasari is the DPRK’s answer to the Godzilla franchise: A giant monster movie steeped in the ideology of North Korean socialism. Not one of the award winners. “Did you see it?”

  “I fell asleep before the end,” Mom confesses. “So, getting back to Mr. Jones: Your theory is that he’s a Kim Jong-il figure who’s looking to make a mark in video games rather than film?”

  “Not exactly. My main point with the Shin Sang-ok story is that there’s precedent for North Koreans going to extremes to acquire professional expertise. As for Mr. Jones wanting to make a mark, well, who knows? I mean, people are snobby about it, but video games are an art form, and you can get recognition for making good ones. Would a dictator be as excited about winning E3’s Game of the Year as he would about the Palme d’Or? Maybe, maybe not.”

  “Well, I hate to sound snobby, but put me in the ‘maybe not’ column.”

  “OK, fine. I think there’s another possibility, one that actually makes more sense. Something else that came up in my conversation with Mr. Park is how much the propaganda war has changed in the last few decades. In the 1970s, the only way a typical North Korean could see a foreign film is if someone smuggled in a bunch of heavy film canisters. These days, you can carry an entire film library in your pocket. It’s still a quick trip to a labor camp if you get caught, but people are willing to take the risk to get a glimpse of the outside world. They’re watching South Korean soap operas, and Hollywood blockbusters, and Bollywood musicals—not the most accurate sources of info, sure, but enough to let them know how much their own government lies to them. North Korea isn’t the most prosperous country on earth. South Korea isn’t a hellhole. And America—well, they still hate us, which isn’t entirely unreasonable given how close we’ve come to nuking them out of existence, but they know we aren’t just bloodthirsty imperialists.

  “And so this has created a huge problem for the regime, right? People—especially young people—are getting more and more restless. So now what? The government can try cracking down even harder than it already does, but they can’t send everybody to a labor camp . . . That’s why they had to make that deal with China a few years back, where they agreed to limit the size of their nuclear arsenal. They needed more trade dollars, and they needed their foreign aid turned back on, so they could bribe their people with more stuff. Only it’s not enough. The younger generation is still pissed off.”

  “And video games help with this how, exactly?”

  “Do you remember Jimmy del Toro?” A friend of mine from Zero Day.

  Mom nods. “Lieutenant Commander del Toro’s son. The one with diabetes.”

  “Yeah, and sometimes when Jimmy got caught up in a game, he’d forget to take his insulin. Or he’d remember his insulin but forget to eat. Which was a problem in Jimmy’s case, but what if you lived in a country that didn’t always have enough food or medicine to go around? What if when you did have enough to eat, that just gave you more energy to think about all the other things you didn’t have? In a situation like that, an MMORPG could be a great distraction, not to mention a way of channeling your anger. Instead of rising up and smashing the state, you’d go into the virtual world and kill monsters.”

  “Pulgasari: The Home Game?”

  “Maybe,” I say. “Or maybe something less metaphorical. Like, you could do a military-themed game, where the players are North Korean soldiers conquering the South for Kim Jong-un, and the bad guys are American and Japanese troops. Or you could do a covert ops game, where players gain levels for committing sabotage and assassinations in enemy countries. And to sweeten the pot, there could be a leaderboard competition with real-world prizes, like extra rations or points towards improving your citizenship ranking.”

  “I can see you’ve been giving this a lot of thought,” Mom says. “What about the logistics problem? Where does the regime get the money to supply millions of citizens with computers and VR rigs?”

  “They don’t need VR rigs. Fully immersive VR is nice, but you can do video games without it. As for the computers, North Koreans have millions of those already. And a network.”

  “Cell phones?”

  “Smartphones. The wifi network’s only third-generation, so there will be bandwidth issues, but it’s not like they’ve got to compete with Call to Wizardry. For an audience that’s never played an MMORPG before, even a 2D game could be incredibly addictive.”

  “True.” Mom smiles. “I remember.”

  “So what do you think?”

  She shrugs noncommittally. “Like I said, it’s creative.”

  “What would it take to make it interesting?”

  “Some actual proof connecting Mr. Jones to North Korea, for a start.”

  “He knows about the Juche calendar,” I say. I tell her about the trivia challenge.

  “Clever,” Mom says when I’ve finished. “But are you certain he knew B was the right answer? Or could he have just been playing a hunch?”

  “Well . . . He sounded like he knew. Like he was sure.”

  “But you didn’t ask why. He didn’t explain his reasoning.”

  “There wasn’t time. We were down to the last few seconds on the clock. And then once we took the ship, we were busy slaughtering Americans. I suppose I could have brought it up again later, but the whole point was to get him to give himself away without realizing he’d done it . . .”

  “No, I get that. It sounds like you handled it as well as you could,” Mom says. Once again, I get the sense that she’s humoring me, but this time it doesn’t feel so good.

  “What about the money?” I ask. “Have you had any luck tracing the owner of the bank account?”

  “Not yet. But I’ve put some new assets in place, so we should have a better picture if and when you get your next payment. That’s due in two days?”

  “Give or take. I have a feeling Smith may push the deadline, just to yank my chain a little. But I should have it by the end of this week.”

  “There’s also your mysterious Chinese woman, assuming she ever gets back in touch. If she does, you’ll want to push her hard about the money she promised you.”

&
nbsp; “Don’t worry about that,” I say.

  “I’m not worried. But I don’t want you to get your hopes up. I think there’s a good chance that there won’t be any more money coming—and that once that’s clear, Smith and Mr. Jones will just disappear.”

  “You really think this could still turn out to be a prank?”

  “I think that’s more likely than Mr. Jones turning out to be Kim Jong-un.”

  “Well, I wasn’t thinking it was him, necessarily,” I say. “Just someone in his inner circle—a family member, or even just an aide looking to score points with the boss.”

  “Has it occurred to you that if you are right, that might not be a good thing? Given what the Kims are capable of?”

  “Are you asking whether I’m afraid of being kidnapped?” It’s my turn to shrug. “I guess I would be, if I were doing this on my own. But I’ve got you watching my back. I bet if Shin Sang-ok had had a mom like you, they wouldn’t have gotten him, either.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

  “It really would be something, wouldn’t it? If Mr. Jones were Kim Jong-un?”

  “Yes,” my mother says, “that would be something.”

  “It would be valuable to you, right? Useful?”

  “A secret channel to the heart of the North Korean government? Oh yeah, we could find a use for that. Of course,” she adds, turning mischievous, “we’d also have to confiscate the money.”

  “What? Why?”

  “China may have signed an accord with the DPRK, but we’ve still got a trade ban in place. You can’t legally profit from business with North Koreans.”

  “Can’t you get me some kind of waiver for that?”

  “I suppose I could,” Mom says, “but then I worry you’d be wracked with guilt when you remember this is blood money the Kims stole from their own people.”

  “Uh-huh,” I say, unimpressed. “Tell me something, Mom: After you confiscate the money, are you planning to give it back to the people? Because if you are, I guess I can’t object. But if you’re not, I don’t see how having two governments steal it adds up to justice.”

  “The moral logic is complicated,” my mother acknowledges. “Don’t worry, we’ll find some way to reward you. Maybe you could pitch a declassified version of the story as a screenplay to your dad.” She makes a framing gesture with her hands. “‘It’s like Ready Player One meets The King and I.’”

  “Funny, Mom. Hilarious.” She certainly seems to think so, though as always when the subject of my father comes up, I can sense other emotions under the surface, masked but there.

  And then Mom just looks tired. She glances at the watch on her avatar’s wrist.

  “Time to get back to work,” she says. “Be careful, John.”

  Chapter 11

  * * *

  theory of mind — A controversial hypothesis that other human beings are sentient and possess thoughts, emotions, beliefs, and goals that are different from our own. In its most radical form, the theory posits that while these differences may make other people’s behavior hard to understand, the question “What the fuck are you thinking?” has a real answer which reason and empathy can discover.

  —The New Devil’s Dictionary

  * * *

  My father didn’t believe that infidelity was wrong.

  This doesn’t excuse his betrayal of my mother, but it does help to explain it. It’s not an easy thing to wrap my brain around: Though I have my share of kinks, they all involve one partner at a time, so to really get a sense of where Dad’s head was at, I need to resort to analogy. Rachel Nakamura is my go-to for that.

  She was the first girl I ever had a crush on. Rachel and her mother worked in the PX at Fort Meade, where Zero Day’s stateside HQ was located. Jimmy del Toro’s older sister, Sarah, had a part-time job in the PX too, and Sarah was friends with Rachel, which is how I came to know her.

  The Nakamuras were devout Christians. The conservative sect they belonged to had some peculiar taboos—or rather, taboos that seemed peculiar if you hadn’t been indoctrinated with them. The weirdest one, from a Zero Day perspective, was that they didn’t use virtual reality, which they apparently regarded as a high-tech species of graven-image worship. They weren’t Luddites: Rachel was rarely without her iPad. But she used it mostly for reading, limiting her web surfing to what was required for schoolwork. She didn’t play video games, not even Bejeweled.

  And she didn’t date. This didn’t stop a long string of boys and girls from asking her out anyway: Rachel was beautiful, and there was the added psychological lure of That Which You Know You Cannot Have. But she always said no.

  I was determined to take my shot like everybody else. The fact that I was nine years old, while Rachel was seventeen, meant my odds were longer than most, but I was hoping the half-Asian thing might give me a leg up.

  That was the same month that Paramount Studios released Amok Time—the first, and still only, R-rated Star Trek picture. It was a trending topic in nerdland; my underage friends and I had all watched the pirated 2D version online, and were now scheming ways to go see it in 3D IMAX. When I heard Rachel Nakamura was a science-fiction fan (according to Sarah del Toro, she’d been reading C. S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy), I decided to kill two obsessions with one stone.

  I went to the PX on a day when Rachel was working checkout, grabbed a copy of the latest eSports Illustrated, and got in her line. While she rang up the magazine I mentioned—trying to be smooth and casual about it—that I was planning to go see Amok Time. I said I’d heard that she might be a Star Trek fan too, and asked if she’d maybe like to see the movie with me. I added that I would be happy to pay her way, if—very smooth, here—she wouldn’t mind handling the actual purchase of the tickets.

  I was hopeful but not delusional; I knew that Rachel would probably say no and wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d humiliated me in the bargain. But her reply still stunned me.

  “Thank you for asking, John,” she said. “But I don’t go to R-rated movies.”

  On its face, this was less weird than the no-VR thing, but it shocked me more, I guess because it ran so contrary to my own impulses. To be free to see any movie you liked without adult supervision or the hassle of illegal downloading, and yet to choose not to: What kind of crazy theology was that?

  I stood there with my mouth open, trying desperately to think of another movie, something PG- or even G-rated, to ask her to instead. But my mind drew a blank, and then the staff sergeant waiting behind me in line put her hand on my shoulder and said, “You’ve been shot down, son. Accept it and move on.”

  A few weeks later, Mom and I deployed overseas. I never saw Rachel Nakamura again. But I still thought of her from time to time, and later, when I was trying to understand my father, I immortalized her in a thought experiment.

  The experiment goes like this: Imagine you’re in love with a smart and beautiful girl. She loves you too, and she’s willing to spend her life with you, but only if you agree to convert and follow the dictates of her religion, the first of which is, Thou Shalt Not Watch R-Rated Movies. So, no more Matrix trilogy for you; no more The Good, the Bad and the Ugly; no more Shakespeare in Love (yes, it’s an R). No more Amok Time.

  Oh, and no more hamburgers, either. She’s a vegetarian.

  That’s the deal, take it or leave it.

  Imagine that you take it.

  Now imagine you’re traveling, alone, on business. You stop for the night at a hotel a thousand miles from home. Though you didn’t ask for it, your room comes with a premium cable TV package. In the elevator you overhear another guest mentioning that Strange Days—one of your favorite films—is playing on HBO tonight. Further investigation reveals that Near Dark and The Hurt Locker are also on offer. And the room service menu? They don’t just serve burgers here. They serve gourmet burgers, made from grass-fed, antibiotic-free Wagyu beef, ground in-house. The kind you can eat blood-rare without worrying about E. coli.

  What do you do?
True, you’ve made a vow, and a promise is a promise. On the other hand, these aren’t your taboos, they’re hers. To you, they’re just arbitrary rules, victimless sins; the only person who will be hurt if you transgress is her, and only if she finds out.

  This is how my father thought about fucking other women. If you’re inclined to argue that the analogy is flawed—because women aren’t room service items; because you can’t catch an STD from a Kathryn Bigelow film—you are missing the point, which, again, is not to excuse Dad’s behavior but to make sense of it.

  And not just his behavior, but his timing. That used to bug me even more than the fact of the betrayal itself. Bad enough to cheat on your pregnant girlfriend, I thought, but to cheat on her while you’re waiting to find out if she’ll marry you? Who does that?

  Someone who believes his moral obligation is to not get caught, that’s who. If my mother had accepted my father’s proposal, as he fully expected her to, they would have moved in together, and not long afterwards, they’d have had a baby to take care of. Which would have made it hard for him to discreetly step out on her. But he had a brief window of opportunity before that happened, and he decided to make good use of it. And as awful as it might seem to me, I can see how, from his perspective, it was not just a reasonable choice, but a responsible one: By having one last fling, getting it out of his system, he’d make it easier to resist temptation later.

  Of course, this dubious moral logic is premised on the notion that it is possible to keep secrets from my mother. Not a safe assumption, as it turns out. My father still has no idea how my mother found out he’d been unfaithful. “It’s like she just knew,” he said, the one time we talked about it. “She looked at me, and she knew.”

  Which sounds like Mom, all right. And Dad’s response sounds like me, before I learned better: He denied the accusation. At first he tried to laugh it off. When that didn’t work, he tried to gaslight her, acting hurt that she’d be so paranoid and untrusting of him. Mom hates that tactic, and she’s not shy about expressing her displeasure physically. Their confrontation took place outside the motel where Dad was staying; the motel had a pool, and my father ended up swimming, fully clothed. By the time he dragged himself out of the water, Mom had gotten in her car and driven away. Dad waited twenty-four hours for her to come back, realized she wasn’t going to, got scared, and spent another two days tracking her down.