Two armed Koreans emerged from below deck holding plastic packages wrapped in gauze tape. They set the packages on the deck. When their commander nodded, one of them pulled a knife from his belt and sliced open the first package. He held a pinch of the brownish powder up to the light. The commander asked where he’d found it, and the soldier replied. Other than the Koreans themselves, I was probably the only man on deck who understood them. They’d found it in one of the sailors’ sea bags. The package was slashed with Chinese characters. When the beam from a flashlight passed across the thick ink, I was able to read them. Antler horn. A highly prized aphrodisiac used in Chinese medicine. But, like all personal business transactions, selling it was illegal in North Korea. The powdered horn of the Siberian caribou could be legitimately obtained only as a gift from the Great Leader.
One of the Albanians was called forward. I recognized him. A slender youth with a scraggly red beard named Zarkos.
The North Korean officer barked at him in English, “Is this yours?”
Zarkos stood dumbfounded, not understanding.
Captain Skander stepped forward to translate. Once he understood, Zarkos stroked his beard nervously and shook his head. Then he launched into a long tirade I didn’t understand, the gist of which, according to Mergim, was that the powder wasn’t his and he didn’t know how it had landed in his sea bag. The North Korean officer was unimpressed. He said something softly to his men, and two of them stepped forward and rammed the butts of their rifles into the young man’s back. He shrieked in pain. The men around me surged forward, but the business ends of half-a-dozen AK-47s immediately trained on them. The sailors backed off. Zarkos struggled briefly but was overcome by a Korean, who deftly knotted his arms behind his back. With the help of two more members of the boarding party, they shoved Zarkos toward the gangplank.
Captain Skander roared in protest, but the North Korean officer ignored him.
After Zarkos had been hauled ashore, the Korean officer, puffing serenely on his cigarette, stepped in front of the sailors. “My name is Commander Koh,” he said in Korean. A young Korean soldier translated. “Welcome to paradise!”
The Albanian sailors shifted their weight, hunched their shoulders, and glanced surreptitiously at one another. None of them laughed, a tribute to their long experience of living under Communist regime.
“Our country is paradise,” Commander Koh continued, “because our Great Leader, the shining light of our people, hero of the Korean War, and fearless general of our invincible forces, provides us with all our wants and needs. You are fortunate to be here, in this land of plenty, even if it is for only these few short days.” Commander Koh paused, took a last drag on his cigarette, and flicked it overboard. “Your ship has passed inspection. All except the man who’s been taken ashore. He will be competently dealt with. The rest of you will be guests of our Great Leader tonight in the People’s Hall of International Friendship. Due to the open heart and generous spirit of our Great Leader, entertainment will be provided.”
Below us, Zarkos had somehow broken free from his captors. He struggled toward the gangplank, but his dash for freedom was cut short by an alert soldier’s swift kick to the groin. Zarkos curled into a ball, rolling on the deck and moaning in pain. His body convulsed and he vomited onto the splintered planks.
“The entertainment begins at eighteen hundred hours,” Commander Koh continued, ignoring the performance below. “You will not be late.” Then he turned away, adding, “Kutna.” Finished. The entire armed boarding party retreated down the gangplank.
Captain Skander stared helplessly as Zarkos was dragged away. When the groaning sailor disappeared from view, the captain turned and spoke to the men in a somber tone.
Later, Mergim explained that Captain Skander believed that the bastard North Koreans only wanted money. It was routine with them. The North Koreans would negotiate a deal with the Albanian shipping cooperative and the contract would be signed, but all along the North Koreans would consider the price too low and make plans to extort more money to bring the contract up to a level they thought appropriate. Captain Skander assured the crew that the shipping cooperative would come up with the money and Zarkos would be freed and back aboard before the Star of Tirana left Nampo.
Grumbling, the sailors returned to their duties.
Mergim agreed with Captain Skander’s analysis. For one thing, the powder that the North Koreans called antler horn was too finely ground to be a natural product from Siberian caribou. “Customers want chunks,” Mergim explained, “to see what they’re buying. Then they grind it down themselves. That stuff in those packages is some other kind of powder, not real antler horn.” Then Mergim added, “The red-star jokers want to show us who’s boss. Every time I come here, they push sailors. Push too hard sometimes.”
After he left, I stood at the railing alone, holding my hands in front of me to make sure the quivering had stopped. Then I went below to help with the cargo.
“She’s a hot number,” Mergim said, leering.
There was only one woman in the People’s Hall of International Friendship who was less than geriatric, and most of the sailors were watching her each and every movement. She was a slightly portly young woman, probably in her mid- to late-twenties, with thick legs and sturdy hips. Ample breasts were pressed tightly beneath a high-necked red cotton dress and a full-length white apron, her straight black hair held in place by a matching bandanna.
I’d already noticed that the other Korean workers called her Pei. Food Worker Pei. I hadn’t let on that I understood, of course. To have done so would have brought attention to myself that could have proven more than just embarrassing. It could have proven fatal.
The other workers in the People’s Hall were either frail older men who scurried about in the back galley or grandmotherly types who wore the same uniform as Food Worker Pei but didn’t fill them out nearly as voluptuously. We’d all been at sea a long time and none of us could take our eyes off her.
“She wears rubber gloves,” Mergim told me.
“Huh?” I sipped on my hot barley tea and set it down. “Rubber gloves? What do you mean?”
“She’s not wearing them now,” he said.
We watched as Food Worker Pei slid a platter of stainless-steel soup bowls onto the center of a round table of Albanian sailors. Showing complete egalitarianism, the sailors were required to pick up their own bowls, along with the spoons and the wooden chopsticks and the plates piled high with brown rice. Once the platter was empty, Pei hoisted it back up, swiveled, and sashayed back to the kitchen.
“Later,” Mergim continued, “when the old women are cleaning up, then she wait in front hallway.”
“Waits for what?”
Mergim grinned. “For rubber glove treatment.” In short strokes, he pumped his fist up and down.
My eyes widened. “You’re serious.”
“Of course, I’m serious.” Mergim puffed on his cigarette, looking slightly offended.
I glanced at the armed men guarding the three exits. “What about the guards?”
“They smoke outside. Don’t look. Probably they get money too.”
The People’s Hall of International Friendship was not like the fleshpots of the Orient one reads about. It was fenced in, about a hundred square yards, with an outside patio that could be used in good weather and a large dining hall where most of the sailors ate their evening meals while in port. There was no menu. Whatever was served was served, take it or leave it. The menu du jour was a dish I recognized from my years in the South, komtang. Sliced beef with onion and egg in a hot broth. No pork-the Koreans had assured us that no pig product would be used since they knew that most of the Albanian sailors were Muslims. Not that the Communist governments of either country approved of religion, but the sailors were paying for their meals, cash on the barrelhead. The strapped North Korean government, meanwhile, was greedy for money they could exchange on international markets, so they complied with the Albanian sailors’ bourgeois requirements.