Warrior Pose (25 page)

It's the fall of 1992 and Bill Clinton has defeated incumbent George H. Bush for president of the United States. Domestic news has the upper hand at NBC and it's all but impossible to sell a foreign story, so I'm off the hook at a perfect time. I spend most of my limited work hours at the bureau leaning back in my chair to keep the pressure off my back. I balance the keyboard on my lap and diligently track all the news in Asia on my computer, staying informed, keeping files on potential stories. Every hour, like clockwork, I lie down on the visitor's couch by the bureau entrance and rest, then take another robot walk and scare the locals again. It's frustrating, like being under the control of some invisible force that doesn't have my best interests in mind.

My growing anger, fear, and anxiety are worse than the physical pain. I hate the body brace, but I'm scared to death to take more than a few steps without it. I want to slam the Stim against a wall,
but I keep hoping it's going to work. I'm sick of all the pills, and yet I'm so dependent and frightened of what might happen without them that I never, ever miss a dose. I know I'm drinking too much, but I need it to release the tension. When I lunch at the Foreign Correspondents' Club now, or anywhere else for that matter, I always have a glass of wine, or two. It's a new habit, drinking this early in the day. I'll do anything to numb my body and my mind.

As I struggle to cope, a compelling story begins to unfold in one of the strangest, most forbidding countries in the world: North Korea. Longtime communist dictator Kim Il Sung runs a totalitarian dictatorship and rules his people with a brutal hand. Thought-police are everywhere. Critics of the regime are routinely tortured and killed. The economy is in shambles. People in the countryside are dying of starvation. There are rumors of cannibalism in remote rural villages.

Kim's only allies are Russia and China, and he even keeps them at bay, holding to a policy of
juche
, which is Korean for self-reliance. North Korea is highly militarized and a constant threat to stability in the region. Capitalism is vilified as the world's greatest evil. But
juche
has proven to be a failure, and the regime is so strapped for cash that it has invited a group of high-ranking Japanese entrepreneurs for a historic tour. Kim is promising them workers, factories, and resources for next to nothing, hoping to persuade them to fund major industrial projects and get desperately needed capital in return.

The Japanese have agreed to Kim's offer, mostly because their economy is still on the rocks and an easy profit is appealing. Luckily, the businessmen insist that journalists be allowed to accompany them, which will boost their images back home. The story is a mustcover and, after some pleading and cajoling, I win Dr. Assam's permission to make the trip, something NBC is still requiring. There's one final catch: Journalists are rarely allowed into North Korea, and the Kim regime loathes Americans most of all. To ensure I get in, we submit our travel papers through my office in Tokyo under the names of my Japanese film crew. My name is at the bottom of
the list like an afterthought. This simple ruse works, and I'm soon among the first American journalists ever to fly into the capital city of Pyongyang.

I've seen a great deal of misery in the world, but never a place as strange as this. Kim has constructed a massive cult of personality, brainwashing his people into believing that he alone defeated the Allied Forces in World War II, and that he's been worshipped daily throughout the world ever since. Americans and Europeans, Kim teaches his people, are subhuman and demonic. As the economy of North Korea nosedives, Kim funds more towering statues and colorful murals glorifying himself, while continuing to build his armed forces and periodically threatening to invade South Korea.

Pyongyang is an extremely modern city with wide avenues, imposing monuments, and monolithic buildings. There's a perfect replica of the Arc de Triomphe, intentionally built slightly taller than the original in Paris. The arch was dedicated on Kim's seventieth birthday, with each of its 25,500 blocks of fine white granite representing a day of his life up to that point. It's the epitome of arrogance and ego in the face of the plight of his people.

Unlike the crowded streets typical of almost every other modern city in Asia, in Pyongyang people are nowhere to be seen. Many of the towering high-rises are perfect on the exterior, but unfinished and derelict inside. There are few cars on the roads, except for the occasional spanking new, black Mercedes Benz with government officials inside, often weaving the wrong way down a wide highway.

I've been in totalitarian countries before, but the paranoia here is unprecedented. The North Koreans want to completely control our agenda. Our hotel room is bugged and we are tailed everywhere. Our filming is heavily restricted. The few people we find on the streets are far too frightened to speak with us. We begin playing games to lose our followers and finally manage to shoot video of the empty buildings and desolate streets, grab a few interviews about the dismal
economy and lack of freedoms on hidden camera, and do our best to document this strange story.

On the final day, we take a three-hour train ride with the Japanese entrepreneurs to a port farther north where Kim hopes they will set up shop. It's a brutal trip for me, sitting on a hard metal seat while the dilapidated train bumps and sways like a cheap carnival ride. All we do at the port is watch the North Koreans escort the Japanese around a few vacant warehouses. We aren't allowed to go anywhere else, and it's a huge waste of time. When I get back to our hotel in Pyongyang at midnight, I'm on fire again. The flight back to Japan is even worse.

In our Tokyo bureau, I grit my teeth through days of writing and editing. I want to lash out at the whole world and almost scream out loud:

But my fear, my hubris, and a growing inner rage prevent me. I have to make it, shift my thoughts, tell myself it's okay:

Before checking out of my Tokyo hotel, I swallow a handful of medications without counting the pills, then down a few glasses of wine on the plane back to Hong Kong. I used to keep track of my drinking, but these days I don't care. It would be a great mistake for anyone to suggest this behavior might be self-destructive in the long run. I'm not open to such advice and would offer very unkind words in return. It wouldn't be pretty.

After filing my reports from the Hong Kong bureau, it's time to return to San Diego for a final checkup. I still have persistent pain, but the fusion is definitely supposed to have taken place by now. As I land at Lindberg Field, I can feel the little knot of uncertainty in my belly again, but do my best to ignore it and tell myself it's a lie:

The radioactive tracer feels colder and tastes steely this time as it's injected into the same vein in my forearm. The electronic table hums as it slowly slides me beneath the bone scanner. The camera buzzes and clicks, sending new gamma images to the monitor. I close my eyes and visualize pictures filled with glowing hot spots at the base of my spine. A perfect fusion, solid as a rock. But I can see it in Dr. Assam's eyes again when we sit down afterward.

“I don't understand this,” he says grimly. “You are a perfect candidate for fusion. You're young, strong, and otherwise healthy. You don't smoke or have any other habits that would inhibit bone growth. You follow the orders, wear the brace, use the Stim. But there's no evidence of fusion. None.”

“So how long will it take?” At the conscious level, I refuse to entertain any possibility of failure. At a deeper level, I know I've lost the battle.

“You have another three months at most.” Dr. Assam is not very convincing. “After that, it's just not possible.”

I have to blame someone, so in my mind I blame the doctor.
He must have botched this. He's ruining my life
. I want to clobber him. Instead, I say good-bye, slamming the door behind me as loudly as possible. As usual, I book the first flight I can find, knowing I'll need to dope myself up again for a return to Hong Kong.

The pool at my apartment building on Victoria Peak sits on the edge of the steep jungle slope. I can lie down on a shallow ledge in the warm water and gaze east over the Hong Kong skyline toward the endless expanse of China. It's a vibrant, exciting world filled with adventure, mystery, and intrigue that I have barely tasted. I feel like a beached whale.

Outwardly, I'm still avoiding the truth, but the knot in my gut has grown to the size of a grapefruit. It's a big, roiling ball of stress eating away at me. I'm too physically and emotionally spent to take “robot walks” any longer. When I get to the bureau on a rare occasion, we talk about all the stories we'll do once I'm better. Everyone knows it's just talk. My producer, the camera people, the editors, all the staff, they know. Out of kindness, no one says a word as they continue to pretend that everything is fine as three months slip by and nothing changes.

It's mid-1993 as I board a plane back to San Diego for a final evaluation. I struggle to get into my seat. I can feel that my back is still broken, and I'm losing all hope. Yet I have no idea that this is my final departure from Hong Kong or that I will never again return to my beautiful home on Victoria Peak.