Ian Slater: World in Flames

“It is time for your confession!” announced General Kim’s interrogator, a bowl of steaming rice on the bare table beside him as he stood menacingly, a thick bamboo stick tapping his leggings. General Freeman, face hollow, eyes down, blinking nervously, his ravenous gaze fixed on the rice, nodded obediently. All he could think of was the film he had seen of Orwell’s 1984 when, in the end, Winston Smith — he of the famous first name and common surname — the embodiment of all mens’ strengths and weaknesses — had bowed his head in obedience to his interrogator, conceding tearfully and irrevocably that two plus two were five.

“Remember,” the interrogator cautioned Freeman, “you must not try any jokings. You must only say what is printed on the screen.”

“I—” began Freeman, “I do not require a—” he had difficulty remembering what it was called “—cue card. I know it.”

“Tell me!” insisted the interrogator, the bowl of rice still steaming, holding Freeman captive with its promise.

“I wish,” began Freeman, “to apologize for my part in the criminal warmongering activity of the United States against the freedoM-1oving peoples of the Democratic Republic of North Korea and the freedoM-1oving peoples of the People’s Republic of China…” The confession went on to “acknowledge” various other perfidies against freedoM-1oving peoples all over the globe. But Freeman was so weak, he could barely proceed. Despite the vitamin shots giving him some color, the effects of malnutrition were evident in his speech. But he knew that before the camera went on, he would be given the rice if he agreed and the promise of a full meal of vegetables and fish, which was a promise, whatever the brutalities the NKA inflicted on their victims, they had never reneged on. He had smelled it after others had confessed — the smell a torture and incitement in itself. No one, Freeman knew, who had not been starved could possibly understand how quickly one’s resolve broke down. As they took him up from the tunnel cells, a guard on each side helping him, he thought of Winston Smith again and of Jeremiah Denton, the senator from Alabama who had been so badly tortured by the North Vietnamese.

In the glare of the lights, he looked like an animal out of its tunnel, blinking almost continuously.

General Kim, unsmiling, dressed in immaculately pressed NKA fatigues, his flat gold-striped and red-starred shoulder boards showing to maximum effect, waited patiently, smoking contentedly.

Kim cleared his throat and suddenly the bevy of technicians, producers, et cetera, fell silent, and in the surreal glare of the kleig lights, the smoke of his cigarette rising voluminously about him, filling the small studio, he spoke to the interrogator, though Freeman knew that Kim spoke quite fluent English from his days as the NKA’s chief negotiator at Panmunjom, where he was in the habit of informing the Americans that “you had better be careful or you will the like the Kennedys— shot like dogs in the street.” The interrogator turned to Freeman. “The general says to remind you that this is on videotape and that if you do not say exactly the words, then there will be great punishment. No food. More beatings.” The interrogator was snaking his finger at Freeman. “You understand?”

Freeman lifted his head and nodded.

The session began, and Freeman, the glare bothering him, asked that the lights be turned down. They refused. Still blinking like a frightened spaniel, he began, “I wish to apologize for my part in the criminal warmongering activity…” astonishing all present by getting the confession word-perfect on the first take, the interrogator pointing out to Kim how Freeman had been celebrated for his attention to detail.

When it was aired on American networks via a South American neutral country, the American public saw the general making his confession on all three networks and the public broadcasting system. So did army intelligence. They wound back the tape and went forward in freeze-frame. Freeman’s blinking was a carbon copy of what Jeremiah Denton had done in Hanoi. Well, almost a copy, as Army General Grey explained to the president. Denton had blinked “T-O-R-T-U-R-E” in Morse. Freeman had blinked “B-U-L–L-S-H-I-T.”

Freeman got the vegetables and fish hours before Beijing caught on. By then, the surrender of all Communist forces had been made, and within two weeks, Douglas Freeman was recuperating in the Walter Reid Army Hospital, regaling his wife and cat, whom she had illegally smuggled in, about those “stupid sons of bitches in Pyongyang.”

It was raining in Portland, but Beth didn’t care, crying uncontrollably though she knew it was very “un-navy.” Both of them explained to the children, albeit gently, that being proud of their dad was okay but not to get any swelled heads.

“Oh, Daddy,” said Jeannie, bursting with pride. The sad note in their reunion was Beth’s report that the newspapers were listing Melissa Lange — David’s old flame, Beth remembered — as one of those killed in the Russian ICBM attacks against SAC in Omaha, and that their officers’ quarters house in Seattle was presumably “gone,” like so many others. Meanwhile they would have to remain billeted in the Marriot Hotel, which the children thought was “great!” Ray’s dad was on the line from New York, though it had taken him over an hour to get through.

“Well, son,” he said, voice tight with emotion. “Well done. Well done. Well done.”

“Oh, John!” It was Ray’s mom on the extension. “Sounds like you’re ordering a steak! Let me speak to him. Ray — I’m so proud. I’m just so—”

“Now, Mother,” began John, but his wife, Catherine, took no notice, her joy unreined after hearing from the Pentagon that David, though wounded, and Robert had survived the war. The War Office had seen no point in raising the question of Robert’s radiation dosage. This was something that the navy thought would best be kept under wraps for a while, largely in an effort to dampen public concern over the number of “Chernobyls,” or downed subs, which now lay littered about the ocean’s floor and which would seriously affect the food chain for some time to come. The navy also justified its position by pointing out, correctly, that the effect of an individual’s radiation dosage could vary widely and in any case was something best left for those affected to discuss with their families as they saw fit.

When David arrived at Heathrow in the Red Cross ambulance, his stretcher wheeled into the army waiting hall, where the other seven survivors of the SAS raid were still being debriefed after exhaustive medical examination, he was conscious, but the painkilling shots he’d received on the flight had made him dopey, putting him temporarily at peace as they readied him for transfer for the operation to remove two 7.62-millimeter bullets from his thigh. As his stretcher passed by, it was the first time David had ever seen the Australian genuinely shocked. “Struth!”

“What’s up with Aussie?” David asked Choir Williams groggily.

“Oh,” explained the Welshman in his basso profundo, “‘e’s lost a bloody fortune, that fellow has. Bet a packet on you, he did — that you wouldn’t make it back. Or that Laylor chappie from Troop A. Very depressed, Aussie is.”

“Sorry to disappoint him,” said David croakily, his throat parched from the morphine.

“Oh,” said Choir philosophically, “I wouldn’t worry about ‘im, sir. ‘E’s probably taking bets from some poor sod that the surrender won’t hold or t’ sun won’t come up in the morning.”