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“Please,” he said again, his voice breaking, barely a whisper in the night. The rat seemed to understand. It turned and crawled away, its tail dragging on the ground as it disappeared silently into the shadows.

The guards continued their routine outside, and each time they marched past on the gravel Lee listened for an extra set of footsteps, but there was only the soft rustle of the breeze through the trees looming over the barracks.

Had something happened?

Had one of his rescuers been caught?

His mind raced in panic. They couldn’t have been caught, he reasoned, as there would have been a flurry of activity from the other soldiers in the camp. Instead, a few lonely guards trudged through the night. They were still coming, he told himself.

What was keeping them?

Peering out through the bars, Lee could see rain beginning to fall. The soft patter was soothing, filling the quiet of the night with a gentle rhythm.

One of the guards marched along the gravel, right on time, but this time he stopped beside the cell. In the dim light, Lee could see the man looking around as he stood there silently in the rain with an old carbine rifle slung over his right shoulder. Casually, the guard stepped off the gravel path and down the concrete steps leading to Lee’s holding cell.

Lee felt his heart pounding in his chest. His hand throbbed. The sound of the key in the lock teased him. He wanted to spring forward and out of the door, but he held his nerve, waiting for the guard to open the rusted lock.

“Come,” a voice said softly in Korean.

Lee crept out of the sunken basement, slipping the heavy overcoat across his shoulders as he stepped out into the rain. Although his left arm was in the coat, he struggled to get his right hand down through the sleeve. Just the slightest of touches against the rough wool sent pain shooting up his arm. He fought to curl his wrist and jimmy the coat on, trying not to let his wounded hand scrape against the inside of the sleeve.

Lee looked at his rescuer.

At first, he didn’t recognize him. The young man’s baby face looked slightly rounded and plain. His hair was hidden beneath a cap, warding off the rain. He didn’t smile. He barely acknowledged Lee at all, treating him with what seemed like disdain.

“I ...” Lee began, not sure what he was going to say, but feeling an overwhelming sense of gratitude. Freedom lay a long way off, but to stand on the other side of those bars, no longer humbled by the filthy straw and the low wooden ceiling, made him euphoric, if only for a moment.

“We must hurry,” the soldier said softly.

As the moonlight lit the side of his face, Lee caught a glimmer in his eye, a glimmer he had seen briefly the night before in the light of a fire burning inside an old wooden cabin. This was Sun-Hee’s brother.

“We will help you, but you must help us.”

Lee nodded, walking alongside the young man.

Clouds passed in front of the moon and the ambient light faded.

Rain fell in a light drizzle.

Gravel crunched underfoot, revealing the distinct sound of two men walking slightly out of sync.

Lee stepped to one side and walked on the muddy grass to hide his presence from anyone sleeping in the rude buildings. He kept to the shadows that were cast by the huts, afraid of prying eyes peering out from behind their darkened windows.

“Sun-Hee and my grandfather are waiting by the coast. I will take you there. From there, you must take all of us to the south.”

“Won’t they stop us?” Lee whispered, gesturing at the gate, more concerned about getting out of the camp than getting back to South Korea. To Lee, Seoul seemed as unreachable as Mars or Jupiter. All he could focus on was the next step. Beyond that, chance would play its hand, but until then he wanted to take control of anything he could.

“Ha,” the young man laughed under his breath. “This is a North Korean army camp. We have rice, maize, fish and eggs. We keep peasants out, we don’t keep them in.”

“What about the boy?”

The soldier stopped in his tracks and turned to face Lee as he spoke. “We leave him.”

“No!” Lee replied, surprising himself with the vehemence of his response. “We have to take him with us.”

“He fell from the stars,” the guard replied, his eyes looking up at the clouds billowing across the sky. “If he can travel through space, he can care for himself.”

“He’s just a child,” Lee insisted, trying to keep his voice low. His mind brought back the eerie words the boy had spoken after his torture, speaking of his death. How could the child possibly know anything about Lee, let alone how he would die?

Perhaps he should leave him.

Perhaps he should run from such a dire prophecy?

Perhaps by running he could avert disaster?

There was something about the boy’s face, some innocence that demanded justice.

“He is under guard,” the soldier said, turning and walking on in the rain. “General Gil-Su arrived earlier this evening. Tomorrow, he will take the boy to Pyongyang to see the Great Leader. There is nothing to be done.”

“No,” Lee repeated, keeping his voice low but speaking with determination. He continued on beside the guard, his boots squelching on the sodden grass. “We cannot let that happen.”

“Why would you rescue him?” the soldier asked.

“Why would you rescue me?” Lee asked in reply. “For the same reason I rescued Sun-Hee. Because it is the right thing to do.”

“But if we are caught.”

Lee held up the bloody stumps on his right hand, saying, “Too many people have died, too many people have suffered for all this to be in vain. I’m not sure I buy the whole star-child thing, but that child is in the eye of the hurricane. I can’t leave him to the storm. If they did this to me, what will they do to him?”

“He is in there,” Sun-Hee’s brother said, pointing at a nearby building.

A dim electrical light hung over the door, barely lighting the wooden steps leading to the entrance.

They walked cautiously up to the administration block. Lee wasn’t sure what Sun-Hee’s brother was thinking, but for all his bravado, it was clear he dreaded being caught.

Lee struggled to keep his nerve. At any second, guards could burst around the corner, yelling and chasing him as they had in the village. He imagined spotlights blinding him as dogs were unleashed. Doubt swept across his mind. Each step seemed to be a step too far, a step that could never be undone or retraced in a slightly different manner to reach an alternate end. He was committed, regardless, and he knew it. If they caught him trying to escape, they’d kill him, but he knew he had to rescue the boy.

The fingers of his left hand trembled, betraying the fear welling up inside him.

Lee peered through a window beside the door to the administration block.

A light flickered from somewhere at the end of the hallway, casting a dirty yellow hue across the rough wooden floor. The step beneath him creaked as he moved to get a better look. There was a guard on a chair at the end of the hallway, his head propped up in the corner, asleep. He was slouching, slumping to the point that he had almost slipped off the chair. A rifle leaned against the wall next to him.

“What’s the layout?” Lee asked. He was trying to be brave, but the tremor in his voice betrayed his nerves.

Sun-Hee’s brother pointed to an open door just inside the hallway, saying, “That’s the reception area for the camp commander. His office is through there. The next two doors are storage and filing. The guard is outside the secretary pool. That is where they are keeping the boy, on a cot in the corner.”

Lee tested the door knob with his left hand. The handle turned.

“No,” the brother said, resting his hand on Lee’s shoulder.

Lee opened the door anyway. His eyes were glued on the sleeping guard in the distance. He pulled the door ajar, just wide enough to slip through and crept inside. The hinges on the door groaned briefly as he closed the door behind him, all the while keeping his eyes locked on the guard.

A floorboard creaked softly beneath his shifting weight. The guard stirred at the sound but didn't open his eyes. He rocked slightly to one side as he fought to get comfortable and drifted back to sleep.

Lee cursed himself.

If he'd thought about his predicament logically, he would have backed out of the door and fled with Sun-Hee's brother while he still could. If that guard woke, his bid for freedom was over. Even if he had a gun, he couldn't use it. The sound of gunfire would have brought soldiers running from all over the camp. Lee wasn't sure what he could do, but he felt compelled to do something. Two decades of rescuing drowning people from raging seas had given him steely determination in spite of the odds. He'd seen plenty of people survive when they should have died, and that same reverence for life drove him on to rescue the star-child. He'd risked his life before. This night was no different.

His fingers tightened around the rusted iron bar in the pocket of his coat.

Lee crept into the reception area, slipping quietly into the shadows.

Scattered clouds drifted by outside, allowing moonlight to brighten the room.

The furniture was austere. A plain wooden desk blocked the approach to the back office. There was something wrong with the desk, something out of place. It took Lee a second to realize he automatically expected a computer or a typewriter on the desk, but the polished wooden surface was bare. A couple of empty filing trays sat to one side of the desk, along with a cup holding a few pencils. Any unfinished paperwork had been cleared away.

Beside the desk, a coat and hat were perched on a rack. Gold trim wound its way around shoulder boards on the heavy woolen overcoat, while the broad military hat looked new. Lee was surprised by the hat, as nothing else he'd seen in North Korea looked new. Everything he’d observed within the camp looked tired and worn. Even the neatly pressed uniform of Colonel Un-Yong had shown signs of wear, as though it had been handed down over generations. This had to be the general’s coat.

Lee slipped off his own coat, placing it carefully on the coat rack, taking care not to make any noise as he slipped the general’s coat on. With a rush of adrenaline surging through his veins he barely felt the coat brush against his injured hand. He tried the hat. It was a tight fit, but he could pull it down low over his brow.

Lee peered into the night, looking for Sun-Hee’s brother outside. The distraught young man paced back and forth on the wet grass, clearly agitated, mumbling to himself, his head darting from side to side, evidently expecting to get caught at any second.

With only one good hand, Lee struggled to do up the belt on the coat. He slipped his wounded right hand into the pocket, hiding his bloody stumps from view and whispered to himself, saying, “No point in waiting. It’s now or never.”

He took a deep breath and marched out into the hallway, deliberately stomping on the wooden floor as he charged up to the sleeping guard in a rushed march. The rational portion of his mind screamed at him, telling him he was insane, that this would never work, but he had to try something. He had no time. There was no other way to get to the child. If he was going to free the boy, he had to have the audacity to try something insane. Would his bluff work? He was about to find out.

The laces on his boots worked loose as he stomped down the corridor, causing his boots to clump awkwardly as he thundered on.

The guard jumped out of his seat, knocking his rifle to the ground.

“Wake up, you drunken fool!” Lee ordered, his voice full of bluster.

He was shaking, and in his attempt to mask his fear he found he was yelling when he’d intended only to sound decisive. “I will have you court marshaled for dereliction of duty!”

The soldier was flustered. His cheeks were rosy, revealing the turmoil of emotions going through his mind. Lee could see he was struggling to decide whether he should stand at attention and salute or bend down and pick up his rifle. He struggled awkwardly between the two motions, stuttering in abortive attempts to do both. Lee knew he had him on the ropes.

“Pick that up,” Lee commanded, pointing at the rifle. “You are a disgrace!”

The soldier scrambled to pick up his rifle, knocking the chair to one side with his boot. He tried to stand at attention beside the door, but he was clumsy. His eyes looked down at the knots of wood in the floorboards, avoiding eye contact with the general.

The soldier’s jacket was twisted half off his shoulder from where he'd slept leaning against the wall. Lee reached out and pulled at one of the lapels, roughly tugging it into place, deliberately intimidating the young man with brute physical contact.

“I’m–“

“Silence!” Lee cried, cutting him off. He had to concentrate carefully on his pronunciation as he mimicked the North Korean slur. The guard kept his eyes low. “I’ve sent men to the mines for less than this.”

He was bluffing. Mines sounded good. He hoped the North Koreans had coal mines or some such equivalent as a labor camp for prisoners. A coal mine was the worst place he could think of, and he cringed at the possibility that they didn't and he’d said something so obviously stupid that it would give him away. If the guard realized what was happening and reacted, he could easily overpower Lee. With his wounded hand, all Lee had was bluster, and he hoped his bluff was good enough.

In his haste, Lee had left the iron bar in his jacket pocket back in the reception area. He was defenseless.

“You are relieved of your post,” Lee said forcibly, pinning his shoulders back and trying to make himself appear bigger than he was.

The guard stood there stunned. His eyes began to rise, drifting across Lee’s overcoat. Had he spotted Lee’s bloodstained uniform beneath? No matter how Lee had wrapped himself, the cut of the coat made it impossible to hide his clothing beneath.

Lee stamped his foot, signaling his disapproval of the guard’s fleeting glimpse. Living in a totalitarian state, Lee hoped the man’s inherent fear of authority was sufficient to paralyze him with inaction. If their eyes met, the game would be up.

In that fraction of a second, the soldier’s nostrils flared, his jaw clenched, and his head dropped in begrudging submission.