CHAPTER Two
Jen? talked, and I listened. He referred to his list of travel requests, said he could do without meeting anyone from the party, emphasized again and again how there were people who wanted him to succeed while he was here and thus it depended on me to help him do that. He mentioned that virtue was its own reward, but added that additional recompense was not beyond question. He threw in a few comments about bikinis and suntan lotion, but then his teeth started chattering so badly I decided we’d better get back to the hotel. At the front entrance, he repeated that there were dangers all around us, birds of prey circling and so forth.
I dismissed this as an exaggeration brought on by exposure to extreme cold. I’d seen it happen in the army when we were on guard duty for extended periods in winter. Frostbite of the brain, someone called it. I stuck around the hotel and kept my eyes open for the next twenty-four hours, nevertheless. I wandered through the lobby; I sat drinking tea; I shuffled into the hotel store and chatted with the salesgirls. I went up to the front door and looked outside. Nothing untoward occurred; nothing even looked about to occur. Day moved to night and back again without a hint of the unusual. There were no signs of bodily harm in preparation. People weren’t hanging around the vicinity of the hotel where they shouldn’t be. That was easy enough to see because the streets were empty. No one could be inconspicuous in this weather. Just in case, as I left to return to the office, I told the chief security man at the hotel to keep tabs on Jen?, something beyond their normal routine. I didn’t completely trust the hotel staff or the BSD men hanging around, but there wasn’t much I could do about that. We didn’t have enough people left in the office to assign against phantoms, not new phantoms, anyway. The old phantoms were taking up all available personnel.
When I got back to the office and told Pak what Jen? had said, I thought he would laugh. He didn’t. “That’s all of it?” he asked.
“Every word.” Some of what Jen? told me had been intended only for my ears, or at least that’s what he implied. But I don’t keep secrets from Pak, not when it comes to work. We don’t always put it in the files, but I make sure Pak knows everything I know—almost everything.
“Go back there and sit around,” Pak said. “I don’t trust those security men, none of them. There’s a reason they work at the hotel, and it isn’t a good one. All I want is for our guest to leave in one piece. That’s not too much to ask, is it, Inspector?”
I’d just spent a full day and night moping around the Koryo, watching the security men watch me. Why would I want to go back?
“The hotel has hot water,” Pak said. This was true; they had more than the Foreign Ministry.
“The duty car is acting funny. You don’t mind if I take yours?”
“Why should I mind? You take my car all the time.” He tossed me the keys. “If you spin out on a patch of ice, don’t call me, I don’t want to know.”
Back at my desk, I opened the top drawer and did a careful inventory. If I was going to sit doing nothing in the hotel, I might as well have a piece of wood that would help me sort through the case. Something pragmatic. Elm was good in that way. Most trees succumb to nonsense at some point in their lives. They get top-heavy. They forget their roots. Not elms. From beginning to end, they remain stately and pragmatic. I had a piece of elm somewhere.
“Get moving, O!” Pak yelled down the hall. “I don’t want to explain to the Minister that something happened to our guest while my inspector was pawing through scraps of wood.” I grabbed the first piece I could find. Acacia. Suboptimal for the work at hand, but it would have to do.
When I got to the hotel, I spotted Jen? sitting on a bench on the second floor. He waved but didn’t make a move to join me. Well, I thought, if the molehill won’t come to Mohammed.
“I’m tired of being in my room,” he said as I stepped off the escalator. “There isn’t a lot on TV at this hour, and I’m out of things to read.” There was a book next to him on the bench.
Just then, three girls walked by in single file. The first one, pretending to be busy thinking, stared straight ahead. The second smiled and nodded, almost gaily. The last one looked away, a deliberate gesture. It was probably as close to haughty as she dared. They were all the same age, not more than twenty or twenty-one. The second one had her hair tied in the back with a blue bow. Otherwise, they were dressed nearly identically in bright-colored traditional Korean skirts and jackets.
“Did you see that, Inspector?” Jen? watched as the trio disappeared around a corner. “I love those dresses.”
“I wasn’t looking.” Of course I’d seen it. Who wouldn’t look at three girls floating by like ribbons in an April breeze?
“Nice to see something colorful for a change.”
“Next week is Lunar New Year; that means the flowers can’t be far away. It’s built into people’s genes, this sort of rhythm. You find it quaint, I suppose.”
“Not at all. Beside the dresses, you know what I noticed? Three girls, three separate reactions when they passed by.”
“Three. Were you expecting more, or less?”
“Why do you think the girl in the middle smiled? Why wasn’t she afraid like the other two?”
“None of them was afraid. What do they have to be afraid of?”
“You tell me.”
“Three girls went by. They weren’t triplets. Is there any reason they should react the same? Are they trained dogs?”
“It was a simple question.”
“Good.”
“Only a harmless observation.”
“Fine.”
Jen? pulled out his wallet. “Let me show you something.” He handed me a photograph of a group of schoolboys. Each confronted the camera in a different way. “This is my son”—he pointed at one of the boys—“and his friends. Look at them.”
“I’m looking.”
“Not trained dogs?”
“No.”
“So what makes them react so differently, so individually to the very same instant in time, just when the shutter clicks?”
“You have a theory?”
“No, it just interests me. I wonder about it. I’d say you do, too. All the time, you wonder about reality. Why does one person stand here and not there? Who moves to the front in a group? Who hangs back? Who smiles? Who smirks? Who stares into the lens? And most important, the question that nags constantly—why?”
“And the answer is?”
“You’re not following me, Inspector.”
“I think I am. You’re trying to figure out whether I’m the bird that flies off the tree first, or if I wait for the others. You’re trying to figure out whether I’m the schoolboy who smiles at the stranger, or if I’m the one who looks away. Do I wave when your car goes by, or do I stare impassively?”
“Cossacks, you’re seeing Cossacks again, Inspector. But thank you. I think you just answered my question. Now I have another one for you.”
“I’m listening.”
“Remember what I told you the other day? I need to make contact with someone. Can you help me?”
“No. I hate to be impolite to a guest, but absolutely not. I cannot help you do anything but stay out of trouble. Why don’t we sit and wait for more groups of girls to walk by. They do that every so often. It passes the time, and as long as you only look, it’s harmless. Besides, it’s comparatively warm in here right now. Making contact with anyone means going outside.”
Jen? passed me the book, his finger on the edge of an envelope between the pages. “They were sold out of volume twenty-two, but the lady assured me this one was equally as good.” His eyebrows did that bouncy, energetic dance the visiting Russian troupes always performed near the end of one of their programs. They call it a country quadrille. I just wasn’t sure what country.
2
In the midst of nowhere, in the middle of what should have been a small, narrow valley of rice fields backed up against a frozen river and lines of tall, ragged hills, a triple barrier cut across the land. On the outer perimeter, an electrified wire fence held up with thick concrete posts; inside that, electrified wires running close to the ground; finally, inside that, coils of barbed wire. The two electrified barriers probably weren’t live. There wasn’t any electricity out here, unless they had their own generator. If they did, it wasn’t running. Generators hum, but everything was quiet. No birds, no people, no nothing.
A bridge stretched over the river, but I decided to park and go ahead on foot; the pilings didn’t look strong enough to take the weight of my car. On the far side of the bridge was a wide gate. In front of it stood an army guard, sunken cheeks, sunken eyes. The eyes glanced at my ID.
“Wait,” was all he said before he disappeared into a hut just inside the gate. I waited. It’s best not to seem impatient when standing outside a military gate in the middle of nowhere. To pass the time, I flexed my shoulder. It was stiffening up, probably because on my way here, I’d had to back downhill nearly half a kilometer when one narrow road over a mountain just stopped. If anyone had reported the country was minus one road, it hadn’t made its way to the Ministry’s transportation office.
A second guard walked up and looked me over. He seemed more alert than his companion; maybe he wasn’t used to visitors flexing at the gate. His expression was distinctly veiled. Not just one of those slack looks country people give you; this one was more careful than that. It was calculated, carefully designed to have no sure meaning. I remembered my conversation with Jen?. Which schoolboy would this have been? The one that hung back? The one that turned his head away?
Off to the side, about ten paces away, was an elevated guard post, big enough for one man and high enough for him to be a couple of meters above anyone at the gate. It was meant for a third guard to watch the other two and to make sure that if anything went wrong, there was backup with a clear line of fire. But it was unoccupied.
The first guard emerged with my ID. He handed it back without any reaction. No eye contact; no gesture that I should pass; no refusal. In my days in the army, ambiguity hadn’t been one of our options. We told people yes or no; pass or go away. Those were the choices. Things apparently had changed. I decided the absence of a clear negative was positive enough, so I started through the gate.
“Halt!”
I stopped. Quick movements after a command like that were never wise. There was a pistol aimed at my chest. The man holding it had on a thick coat with a hood. It was the kind officers in special favor wore, but I couldn’t see any insignia.
“A problem with my ID?” I glanced back casually at the two guards. Their weapons weren’t drawn, which I assumed was a good sign—unless that, too, had changed.
“I want an explanation, and make sure it’s convincing. Your ID tells me who you are, not why you want to get onto my facility.” He didn’t emphasize it, but he didn’t have to—“my” facility.
“Official business.”
“Official business.” The pistol didn’t waver. “Whereas, apparently you think I’m on holiday.” The officer took a step toward me. “This isn’t the sort of place your ministry has any business, official or otherwise.”
“Not normally,” I said. This man was too self-assured to be a colonel. Colonels are jumpy, even senior colonels. He must be a general, though I didn’t recall generals being so short on support staff—adjutants and so forth. It wasn’t usual for generals to hold pistols on visitors; that’s why the lower ranks existed. Whether he was the man Jen? wanted to meet remained unclear. If he didn’t shoot me, we were off to a good start.
“Your ministry has no business out here at all, not ever.” His tone was brusque, but his finger had come off the trigger.
“In this case, it is something important. Not normal important. Very important.”
“Of course. Why would anyone drive out from the warmth and comfort of Pyongyang if he didn’t have something very important to do?”
I hadn’t seen any tire tracks on the road up to the gate. It was hard to imagine a general without a staff car, or a jeep. The colonel in Pyongyang didn’t have a driver. This man didn’t even appear to have a jeep. “Our conversation might be more productive if one of us didn’t have a weapon pointed at his midsection.”
The barrel dropped a hair. “Better?”
“I take it you’re not going to allow me to carry out my mission.”
“Very impressive word—mission. A solo mission, at that. Why are you by yourself? I thought the police traveled in packs.”
“Maybe you’re not the only ones shorthanded these days.” I nodded at his empty guard post. Pointing would have meant moving my hands, and I didn’t want to do anything that put his finger back on the trigger.
He didn’t take his eyes off me. “I have to send some of them home. I’ve fed those I could with my own rations, but it’s not enough. So I send them back to their mothers to cluck over them. As if their families have more food than we do.” He holstered the pistol. “You can sit in the hut if you like while you try to explain why you’re here. Then I’ll decide what to do with you.”
“Do you mind if I go back to my car to get something?” The general didn’t reply, and the guards, after watching his face, stared at nothing.
3
When Jen? had asked me again to help him set up his meeting and told me who it was he wanted to meet, I drove back to the office and told Pak we needed to dump our visitor. Get rid of him, fast. He was going to get himself into serious trouble, and if we were standing next to him, we’d end up in the same pot. For the second time in the same day, Pak surprised me.
“We can’t dump him. You’d better go out and see what this is about.”
I was stupefied. “Are you kidding?”
“Sometimes, Inspector, it is better to bend a little. It’s unusual what he wants, but everything is unusual these days. There are winds blowing from places you and I don’t even know exist. Forget the Ministry; they don’t have to know, and if they find out, I’ll handle it.” He glanced at the envelope Jen? had given me. “Don’t open that,” he said. He reached into his desk and took out a small book of red coupons. I could see it had never been used. He tore off the first two tickets and handed them to me. “These should get you access to special rations. Notice I said ‘should.’ This booklet is three years old, and who knows what’s gone cockeyed in the meantime. I was told only to use the coupons in extreme situations. No one defined extreme, though, so I’m doing it myself.”
“You have access to grain?” I squeezed every drop of surprise out of my voice.
“I’ve thought about it a lot, Inspector. I don’t need your disapproving stare. I can’t use these for personal rations. I can’t, and I won’t.”
“But you can use them for this crazy foreigner?”
“Maybe the grain isn’t for him. Maybe it’s for something more important.”
“Really? And am I to be let in on this little secret, or do I just follow orders? These mysterious breezes, are they why you stood up to the special section when they were here last month? Was it because you knew more about the foreigner than you bothered to tell me?”
Pak put the coupon book back in the drawer and slammed it shut. “Don’t press me on this, Inspector. I’ve got a lot on my mind. Keep it simple. If those tickets really work and you can get a couple of bags of rice, throw them in the car and bring them out to your meeting. Take this along, too.” He took a piece of paper from his desk, folded it in thirds, and put it in a tan envelope with a red stripe in one corner. Then he pulled a strip of white paper from the flap and sealed it. “Amazing, isn’t it? The supplies some sections have.”
“A red stripe? Isn’t that a little melodramatic?”
“Just be glad it doesn’t have a black stripe.” Pak handed me the envelope. “This may come in handy. It’s from someone I used to know. Apparently, he wants our guest to have that meeting.”
“And we take orders from him? Since when?”
“Not orders, Inspector. Call it a favor.”
“Do I know him?”
“If you didn’t before, you do now.” Pak nodded at the envelope. “Don’t use it unless you have to. And try not to get yourself shot. You’ll be a long way out in the countryside, and I’m not sure we have the resources to go looking for bodies.”
At the ration depot, the red tickets only got me a few half-empty bags of rice and a sour look from the supply clerk. “I didn’t know people at your level could get these tickets,” was his only comment.