by James Church
"I'll tell you a story, Richie. Take it for what it's worth. One day I was driving down a road in the countryside, and on the slope of a hill, sitting on a rock, was an old woman. In front of her was a small girl. The girl stood with her head bowed, sobbing. Finally, she turned and walked into an empty field, as if she wanted to disappear into the earth itself Why, Richie?"
"Why what?"
"Why would anyone want to make a child so unhappy? Why would anyone who had already lived their life want to grind a child into the dirt?
What possible reason, do you think?"
The Irishman hunched forward, his hands on his knees. "That happens sometimes."
"No, not like this. This wasn't a scolding. This wasn't a lesson. This was destruction, an A-bomb on a dollhouse. That child had nowhere to go, no sun left to shine, no birds to sing, desolation and sorrow in front of her as far as her eyes could see. She had collapsed, you could see it. I cannot imagine she could ever be made whole. Richie, listen to me. That girl had nothing left to hold her together, no tomorrow, no hope. She wasn't really crying. Tears are for the living. She walked into that field like she was already dead."
"Inspector." The color had drained from his face. "Children are like that. They collapse, then they bounce back."
"You didn't answer my question, Richie. Why would the old woman want to destroy that girl?"
"How can I know? I wasn't there."
"You see? You can't believe it would be done for no reason. And you know what is worse? You can't possibly understand. So don't talk to me about anger."
4
When I woke, the sun was streaming through the window. The curtains were long gone, but the rods remained, as if waiting for the return of better days. The plate with the bread was on the floor. There was no sign of the girl, her perfume, or my shirt. I needed to find the Manpo Inn. I needed to buy a jacket, and I needed some tea. I limped to the window again. Judging by the sound of a train whistle and the rumble of a locomotive, I was not far from a rail yard. It seemed very close. Off to the right stretched a line of hills. The river was nearby; I could smell it on the morning breeze. Probably that was where I needed to start.
Though start what, I didn't know. With luck, Pak would get a message to me explaining why I was here with a throbbing head and an aching back, instead of in Pyongyang. In Pyongyang, I knew, things didn't always make sense, but at least there I was not inclined to care.
I dozed off again, and this time when I woke, my shirt was folded on the chair. There was a note in the pocket, written in Russian. "Perhaps we will meet again, Inspector." It wasn't signed, but it looked like it could be her handwriting, and the hint of perfume was enough to make me fold the paper and put it back in the pocket.
Downstairs, the clerk looked at me suspiciously. "Checking out?"
"I didn't realize I had checked in, but I might need a room for tonight."
"Got
none."
"The place is empty."
"Yeah, so?" I saw him open a drawer behind the counter with his right hand, while his left hand tapped a pencil on the magazine he had been reading.
"Nothing. This isn't up to my standards, anyway. Not even close.
Bread crumbs on the floor. Attracts roaches."
"Well," he said, "it's not the Ritz."
"What would you know about the Ritz, my friend?"
"What's it to you? You Pyongyang people think you are the only ones that know about the big, wide world and the rest of us are just yokels? Time for you to leave. I've got work to do."
"Friendly town. Who says I'm from Pyongyang, anyway?"
He started thumbing through the magazine. "Door is behind you.
Beyond that, the street. Watch where you walk, the jeeps are murder."
"Just one thing." I figured if he wanted to get rid of me so badly, maybe he would answer a simple question. "A restaurant."
He didn't even look up. "Too early. Plenty of vendors. They take cash, foreign currency, none of those lousy food coupons."
"One more thing, where is the Manpo Inn?"
He looked quickly in the drawer, which was still open, then shut the magazine and examined his fingers. When I didn't move, he glanced behind me. "Like I said, the door."
As I walked out into the street, I turned briefly back to see if the clerk was using the phone. He wasn't. The magazine again had his full attention. The sign over the door said new manpo inn.
At this time of year, there were another fifteen hours until sunset, when I was supposed to meet Kang. It was likely he was already here.
Driving would have been quicker than the train, even over bad roads.
Hell, for all I knew, Kang had ironed my shirt. I wondered if Elena worked for him.
The streets were already filled with traffic, mostly small trucks. All of them were heading toward an area some distance away, on the other side of the train station. It was a peculiar layout, making the town seem split in two. The Inn was in a run-down section, the usual ramshackle buildings on narrow dirt streets that dissolved into narrower alleys. On the main road there were a few tall trees, a building that had the air of a local party office, and further on, a large shed with a rusted metal roof that sagged badly in the middle and looked as if it would collapse but probably wouldn't. In the other direction, about two hundred meters this side of the train station was a one-storey wooden building. It stood pretty much alone, almost aloof. There were no windows along the front, just a blank wall right on the street, with four wooden steps that stuck out into the traffic. The building must have been there a long time, even before the road was built, maybe before the Japanese took over, but not longer than the hills, which it faced on the back. Beyond the old building was a cleared area, where a market had been set up, and a few more trees.
Walking toward the new section, I could see it was laid out carefully, though not by someone who had studied urban planning. Every detail followed a single imperative. It was meant to be brutally practical, and it was. Five narrow roads, all packed dirt, fed into a traffic circle. The roads served lines of warehouses and several other low buildings I couldn't identify from where I stood. Only one way, a new two-lane paved highway, led out. To get to the highway, the trucks had to stop at a guard station in the middle of the circle. There was already a line of trucks waiting. As each stopped, the drivers stepped out for a document check and a cargo inspection. It didn't look like a cursory check, either.
Every driver disappeared into a guardhouse for several minutes. No effort was made to move those trucks to the side; they sat blocking traffic until their drivers reemerged. None of the trucks were waved through.
That meant the bribes were all paid inside, recorded, credited, and enforced with a tidy discipline that made the whole thing run like clockwork.
There
were no uniforms in sight at the checkpoint; the guards, big men with broad shoulders, all wore civilian clothes. No one slouched.
The guard station wasn't the normal shack. Two stories, solidly built, it had large tinted windows all around so whoever was inside could see 360 degrees and a blue tile roof with radio antennae on the top. A line of saplings stood on either side of the walkway leading up to the front door. Someone thought this operation was going to be in business for a long time.
Two women walked past me on the opposite side of the road. One wore a pale green long-sleeved blouse with a lace collar and white pants that ended just above high-heeled brown leather boots. The other was dressed more simply, a white silk blouse with black pants tied at the bottom with ribbons. Around her neck she wore a scarf, dark blue with vivid red flowers linked by a golden chain. Her boots were soft leather.
Their clothing was not what you'd see in Pyongyang--not on the people I pass on the street, anyway--but more than what they wore, what attracted my attention was how they moved. People in Pyongyang walk intently, pumping their legs and swinging their arms to put their energy into getting somewhere. These women walked with a nonchalance
I had never seen, bent back slightly at the waist so their hips seemed to be leading them. They walked without effort. Their shoulders barely moved; their long legs swung so slowly that you could imagine the scenery was being rolled past them. I stood and watched the other pedestrians.
No sneakers, no plastic boots, no canvas shoes. Only leather.
There were no children, no girls holding hands, no boys chasing each other into the street. Then it occurred to me. No one was born here. No one called this place home.
A jeep roared by, a military jeep heading for the guard post. It passed so close I could see the driver's eyes in the mirror. There was no license plate on the back. The passenger in the front was holding a Chinese-built radio scanner. I needed to talk to Pak.
When the jeep was about ten meters beyond me, its windshield shattered in a burst of gunfire, a fat burst, sort of lazy, as if whoever had been waiting to pull the trigger was not in a hurry and not worried about getting away. The jeep swerved, barely missed a work gang on the side of the road, and hit a good-sized larch tree at high speed. The work gang didn't pause. Nobody moved in the jeep.
"Let's walk." Somebody grabbed my arm. I knew it was Kang, though he had on an old brown cap and dark glasses. "You should have stayed in bed." He slowed when he saw I was limping.
"Where are we going?"
"Just a nice stroll to the train station."
"Thanks, but I'm not getting on any trains for a while."
"You want tea or don't you?"
"What's with the jeep?
"Accident, too fast, poor visibility, slippery road."
"Gunfire."
"Really? Not in Manpo!"
"Friends of yours?"
"My friends don't drive jeeps. They also don't use Chinese scanners.
The Czech models are much better."
We turned the corner just as the jeep's gas tank caught fire. I turned to go back, but Kang kept hold of my arm. "Forget it, they're all dead.
No loss, believe me."
The heat from the explosion and the stench were stifling. "Pretty cruel thing to say, when their bodies are still--"
"Warm, yes, they are that. Don't fret, Inspector. If it were you in there, they wouldn't give it a second thought."
"This is completely crazy, Kang."
"No, it's Manpo." He quickened his pace slightly. "Thanks for coming up here, incidentally."
"What?"
"I said, thanks for coming up here."
"I thought you advised me to go back to Pyongyang. 'Get your little legs back to the capital,' you said."
"Wrong. I asked you here."
"You did? I thought I was here because Pak ordered me. He didn't say why. Just told me to get here."
"You always do what he says?" I couldn't tell if that was a jibe or just a question. "You're here because I asked Pak, and he asked you." This made no sense. Pak wouldn't do favors for Kang. Though I still wondered if Pak had told him where I was in Kanggye.
Kang took off his hat and dark glasses. "Damned silly, but the hat always throws them off. That's Pak's idea." He glanced at me. "Confused?"
I
didn't answer. I was trying to figure out the next step.
"Pak doesn't work for me." Kang slowed momentarily to keep pace with my limp but then sped up again. He wanted to get off the street.
"He doesn't work for me, but we do favors for each other from time to time. He likes to keep his distance, and he tries hard to keep me away from his inspectors. That's why he sent you out of town. Usually succeeds."
"But
this time . . ."
"This time he owed me a big favor."
"That's me."
"Very good. I needed someone I could trust."
"That's not me. You've got the wrong boy, Kang."
"I'm betting otherwise, Inspector. You and I are going to establish a mutual assistance pact. Nothing elaborate, just something quick and dirty. To do that, we're going to have to trust each other."
"I need to call Pak."
"Sorry, can't be done. Pak told you to stay away from phones. Anyway, there isn't a phone in Manpo I trust, not even my own."
"Let me clear up something, Kang. I don't work for you. And I don't work with you. I'm a poor, dumb inspector with Unit 826 of the People's Security Ministry."
"In that case, tell me why are you three hundred kilometers out of your jurisdiction, with no authority, on the border with no lifeline, no cover story, and already with three tails on you?"
"I'm here because Pak told me to get out of town after he heard what you and I talked about. What tails?" I resisted the urge to look behind me. Three tails? Couldn't be. Who had that sort of manpower to throw at a nobody police inspector? I stopped and leaned against a building for support when I realized the answer a second later. Military Security, that's who had the manpower, and they always worked in three-man teams.
"You all right?" Kang looked around. "Let's keep moving. And don't worry, the tails fell off when the jeep blew up. Probably looking to scavenge their friends' boots. After our chat on top of the tower, I asked Pak if I could borrow you for a few days."
"So he sent me out of town."
Kang smiled. "He told me to get lost. You rode partway with the enchanting Miss Chang and her friend the grumpy colonel."
"Friends of yours?"
Kang pulled slightly at my elbow, enough so I winced. "Going to have to do something about that back. You could use a good sauna, but there isn't one in this town, not one I'd recommend, anyway. After you got to Kanggye, I called Pak again and renewed my request."
"That's when he told me to go to Manpo?"
"But you told him to tell me."
"True."
"But I can't call Pak to check this."
"Trust, my dear Inspector. I knew you would catch on eventually."
We crossed back over the dividing line, passed the train station, and then Kang stopped at the narrow wooden building. Close up, I could see where there had once been small round windows on the front. These had been removed, not covered but removed completely, and filled with round plugs cut from the trunks of old trees. The front door was solid, five thick oak planks fitted together, with a big new lock.
We went in and sat at a tiny wooden table, crammed near three other tiny tables, each one more polished than the next and all of them made from a type of wood I couldn't place. Unless they had trees around Manpo I'd never seen, the wood was from somewhere far away.
It wasn't from Siberia; China, maybe, though I never worked too much with Chinese wood. There was a vase with flowers on every table. A girl came out from a back room. Before she closed the door behind her, I could see the room was flooded with sunlight that entered through a bank of windows looking out at the hills. Another door led to the outside.
It was open, and a breeze came in, fresh, as if it were from someplace other than this town. The girl had a pretty face, and she almost smiled when she saw Kang.
Kang's eyes scanned the walls, then the molding along the floor.
The girl watched him. She didn't nod at him so much as let her head drop a fraction, as if she had spotted something under a table and then decided it was unimportant.
"Coffee for me." Kang turned to her, and this time she did smile.
"And tea for my friend."
5
"Trust," said Kang. "A wonderful thing, in short supply. You trust me.
I trust you."
"And then you put a knife in my ribs."
Kang stared at me. Amusement might have passed over his face, only it moved too fast for me to be sure. "Knives are not my style, Inspector.
In any case, at the moment we are in this lovely tearoom." He stood up and began examining the flowers at each table. There weren't many, but it was a nice touch. Kang did not seem moved by the artistry of the scene. Very deliberately, he lifted each vase, peered at its base, and then felt around the edges. When he put down a vase, he arranged the flowers again.
The
girl came in with the tea and a cup of coffee. She glanced at me, then at Kang, then walked a few steps to the rear of the room where she had a book waiting on the counter. She pulled her hair back into a bun to keep it out of her eyes, took a sip of tea, and propped the book open, resting it against a bowl filled with polished stones. All of this was part of a routine; I could tell she did it every morning. I can't read a word of French, but I know it when I see it. The title along the book's spine was in French.
"Nice place," I said, and nodded toward the girl. "Very cultured."
Kang gave me a level gaze. "My daughter. My eldest daughter." The teacup was halfway to my mouth. I put it down slowly, but even so it rattled slightly when it reached the table.
Kang's face lit up. "Surprised?"
"That you should have such a nice-looking daughter?"
"Or that she is here and not in the capital?" Kang drank his coffee in three swallows and smacked his lips. "Strong, good and strong. Made the way it should be."
"Not a lot of coffee around," I said carefully.
"You'd be amazed, Inspector. This is a border town. Lots of things here will amaze you. Actually, this isn't really Manpo. That's down the road a bit. It's crooked in its own way, but nothing like this. This is a new town, Sinmanpo. Lots of activity."
"Never heard of it."
"It doesn't exist, officially. There's no such place in the administrative records. No official police presence. Everyone wants some of the action, especially the army. Every security agency is watching every other agency to make sure no one gets too far in front. As far as your ministry is concerned, this place might as well be on the moon. The regional police know better than to venture over here, even when they drive up for their regular patrols through Manpo. That's why the girls in the leather boots are so bold. They don't worry about police."
"And at the train station?"
"People don't look at each other. It's neutral ground."
"Nice place to live, I suppose, as long as you stay out of jeeps." I didn't know if Kang would tell me why his daughter was here. If it was a family matter, it was none of my business. If it was a political problem, then it was his business and I didn't want to know.