by James Church
"He was following me. Someone will know that. And the guard in the valley must have seen the two of us up here. There will be inquiries."
Kang was getting impatient. "Don't worry about the guard. He didn't see anything."
"You think you're going to pay him off?"
"I don't have to. He works for me." I couldn't tell if he meant to tell me or if it had slipped out--though I didn't think Kang was the type who let things slip.
"That guard? What is the Investigations Department doing with agents in the hills of Manpo sipping tea?"
"I didn't say he was an agent. Now, can we go?"
"Whose compound is that?"
"No one you'd be interested in."
"Suddenly, I'm very interested."
All at once, Kang looked tired. "Pak warned me you could be an awful pain in the ass."
"You want me to peddle some fish on that compound?"
This brought a thoughtful look. "Pak also said you were smart.
That's an idea I hadn't considered. You'll need to be in there by this evening."
"Why?"
"I don't know." Kang stared down the trail. "No, really, I don't know. My information is that whatever is going on down there gets done tomorrow at dawn."
"Does this have anything to do with what Pak told me?"
"That depends. What did Pak tell you?" It wasn't a friendly inquiry.
"You want my help. That's what you said. But you have told me exactly nothing about what you want me to do. Or more important, why.
I have developed a rule over the years. I stick to it, all the time. Never take a step, unless I can see at least that far in front. You don't want to tell me some secrets, okay, I don't want to know. But if you don't tell me something more than what you've given me so far, this is as far as I go."
Kang looked around. "Nice place for a conversation, I guess. But first, tell me what Pak said."
"All he said was, the ground was moving."
"That's it?"
I thought a moment. "He also said all hell might be about to break out."
"Not might. Will, and soon." I could see Kang was debating with himself about what more to say. "This has been coming for a while.
Months. We first picked it up in February, in Japan. After our initial reports, we were told to stop paying attention, it wasn't our business."
"So you paid closer attention."
"What I don't know can hurt me. Basically, we dug around and realized there has been a decision to fix relations with Japan, finally."
"And that's bad?"
"No, nothing wrong with that, if you can stand smiling at the Japs in order to get a few billion dollars in blood money from them. But there is a hitch. The Japanese want some old problems"--Kang hesitated, then finished the thought--"solved."
"What has this got to do with that compound down there?"
"Nothing, directly. Except that's a Military Security compound, and Military Security has been unleashed to help solve those old problems."
"And they think you're part of the problem standing in the way of those billions?"
"I need to keep them off my neck for at least another week. Knowing what is going on down there might help."
"You're plenty interested in Military Security, aren't you? Is that what you needed from me when we were at the tower, some sense of the location of Military Security offices? I thought the Investigations Department had pretty good sources of information."
"On the outside, Inspector, not at home. Pyongyang is a foreign country to me. Ask me about Beijing, ask me about Moscow, even ask me about Budapest." He smiled. "In Budapest, I know pretty much what goes on, and where. But Pyongyang?" He shook his head.
"Won't it spook them if Chong's body is found on the road overlooking their buildings?"
"I doubt it. Anyway, stop worrying about Chong's carcass. It won't be here long. There will be some lumber trucks by in an hour or so.
They drive fast and have bad brakes. It's a miracle no one has been hit on this road before."
"I thought it was bad shoelaces."
Kang was moving fast down the road. "So he fell in front of a truck."
"Why was Chong following me?" I started off after Kang, wondering how he could move so quickly downhill without falling over.
"He was stupid, but he had a sixth sense. Maybe you don't smell enough like someone who deals in fish. Maybe you look like a friend he once had from Wonsan. Who cares? We've got work to do, and only twelve hours left to do it."
I glanced down in the valley again. The guard was gone. The so called guard dog had his nose in the teacup. It didn't look like it was going to be a problem to saunter in the gate. It was a cinch that the dog was working for Kang, too.
11
The clerk at the inn was cranky. "You know how to fix a video machine?"
Through the door behind him, I could see videotape all over the floor. "Damn Chinese pirates." He kicked at some of the tape that was wound around his foot. "Everything they build breaks."
"Cost a lot?"
"What do you care what it cost?" His eyes narrowed, and he swayed from side to side like a rat snake pretending it was a cobra. "You owe me a basket of fish. And they better never have been swimming in Chinese waters."
"How would you like a new video machine?"
He looked at me coolly. "You stick to fish, alright? I'll do the electronics."
I
shrugged. "Up to you. You know anyone else interested in some fish? I have an extra truckload coming, and if I don't move them, they go bad. Probably smell up the whole inn."
"Hey, you're not bringing them in here. The rule is, no animals in the rooms."
"No goats?"
He sneered. "Not even for you. You Wonsan people are disgusting."
"Too bad about your tape." I started toward the stairs.
"Wait a minute. What if I knew a certain person interested in some fish?" He paused. "Or a truck."
Kang had told me that if I mentioned the extra truck, the clerk would go right for it. "Truck? I don't know. It's new, Japanese. Refrigerated.
Why would I want to sell it?"
"Because you'll never get rich with those stinking fish, but that truck is probably worth something."
"And if it disappeared, someone wouldn't be too happy, now would they?"
"Happens all the time, you know. Driver stops for a drink, or a trip to Finland." He smiled in his irritating way. "Leaves the keys in the truck. Comes out half an hour later, no truck. Driver is happy. Truck is happy. One big happy scene."
"Nice. Happy is good. But a new, sparkling white refrigerator truck is a work of beauty. Anyway, it belongs to Pyongyang, not to me.
There'd be hell to pay once they saw it was gone from the gasoline reports."
The
clerk was getting hungrier and hungrier. The more I described the truck, the more he decided he wanted a part of it. Even mentioning Pyongyang didn't scare him.
"Pyongyang is full of stuffed shirts and dopes."
I looked up on the wall at the two pictures, father and son, staring down. The clerk gave a nervous laugh. "This is a small country, but the Center is far away. In Manpo, we look at Pyongyang like the moon. All you need to know is what phase it's in."
"You're talking trouble, old friend," I said quietly.
"Don't lower your voice in here, pal. Someone might think we're not having a normal conversation. Listen, this place is filled with police, agents, investigators, counterintelligence goons, Chinese, South Korean, Taiwan, Russian. Last year we heard there was a pair of Japanese trying to set up an operation. Come to think of it, they said they were moving fish." He looked at me real hard, then half smiled. "Maybe I should ask you for some papers or something, after all."
"Maybe you should. Good way to lose a refrigerator truck. New tires. Not that retread crap." If the clerk was talking to me about counterintelligence agents and Russian operatives, he knew plenty. I might as well see how much more he had. M
aybe he had some information on that Military Security site. I wasn't going to bust in there based on the little I knew about it. The dog didn't look to be a problem, but the machine-gun posts were another story. "What do you know about that compound in the hills, the one with the new Mercedes parked in front?"
The clerk was practically drooling at the thought of a new, white, Japanese truck. He stopped in midthought when he heard my question.
"No idea what you are talking about."
"White Japanese truck, refrigeration brand-new, good tires. A battery in it as strong as a bull's--"
"Alright. Be at the river at sunset. Down by the bridge. There's a little restaurant off to the side, behind some trees. Run by an old Chinese man and his son-in-law. Just hang around outside."
"What have they got to do with it?"
"You want information, you show up there."
This did not smell right. I didn't even know why I had told Kang I'd help him out. Now I was going to be down at the river as the light was fading, probably in a deserted spot, to meet people who might or might not turn out to be helpful. "If I don't like the looks of it, I'm leaving.
No truck. And no fish for you, either."
The clerk yawned and then shook his head. "I'm getting the feeling you don't have any fish, anyway."
"What makes you think I have the truck?"
"People have noticed you, pal. I wouldn't go out on walks in the hills at dawn anymore, that's what I wouldn't do." He moved toward his room. "Pirates," he muttered and kicked at a tangle of tape. Then he turned back to me. "Oh, this came for you."
It was a telex, from Wonsan. It was short. "Good fishing weather, lots of blue sky."
Even the Ministry couldn't locate me so quickly in a place like Manpo. So how did Pak know where I was, unless he and Kang were talking? And how was I going to call him? The clerk thought a moment and then handed me a name card he retrieved from the drawer behind the counter. "I'll bet Grandma Pak could get me another video," he said thoughtfully, as he shuffled into his room and shut the door.
I almost wasn't surprised that the old woman's reach extended all the way up here, to the border. Though if the clerk knew her, maybe he knew Kang, too. In which case, the two Chinese at the river might be helpful after all. I decided I needed to sit and think where it was quiet--no jeeps, no logging trucks with bad brakes. Kang had killed a Military Security operative; maybe it was an accident, but Colonel Kim wouldn't care. Military Security had orders to get Kang; now they had the perfect excuse to shoot him on sight. My stomach growled. A cup of tea was waiting for me, somewhere. Maybe it was time to crawl to the train station and get a ticket back home. Except Military Security would be looking for me. Surely by now they had a lead on who I was.
Kim would have picked up something, noticed I was gone from Pyongyang, and put out a search bulletin. Someone would have read it and matched me with the man limping beside Kang a few days ago. Once they knew I was in the area, they would have doubled the surveillance.
Maybe that's why Chong followed me up the hill, though it was hard to understand what he was doing operating by himself, without the rest of his team. They wouldn't all be as dumb as Chong. For sure, Kim wasn't dumb. Mean as a snake, but not dumb.
When I got back to my room, there was a note under the door, in Russian. It said: "A fresh jar of blueberry jam arrived today. Perhaps we could go for a picnic. Lena."
Lena. That must be the name she used with friends. Pretty name. A picnic was just what I wanted. Maybe on an old pavilion overlooking a meadow up in the hills, by a stream somewhere, where it was quiet except for the birds and the wind in the treetops. No fish. No trucks. Just Lena.
I looked again at the small card the clerk had given me. Funny name card, blank, no name on it. The back of it was more interesting. There was a portion of a train timetable cut out and pasted on. It listed a train to Kanggye, but that was crossed out; beneath it, underlined, was a train Hyesan-Musan-Najin-Harbin. Except I knew there weren't trains anymore to Harbin. This was an old schedule. The date, in small print along the bottom, was "Year 11 of the Reign of Showa"--1936, the year my grandfather joined the anti-Japanese guerrillas, based not far from Manpo.
I held the card up to the light and thumbed the edges and bent it in the middle to see if there was an extra layer. This wasn't a message from Pak; we'd agreed on codes that had to do with weather reports, not travel itineraries. Pak had gotten through to me; the telex from Wonsan was from him. So who was this card from? Najin was all the way up the coast, near the border with Russia. Why would I want to go up there?
And Harbin. Harbin was out of the question. I didn't have a passport with me, I didn't have Ministry orders allowing me out of the country, and I wasn't carrying enough money to bribe the guards. I put the card on the table next to the bed and lay down to think.
12
The sky was clouding up rapidly, the tops of the hills shrouded in a gray mist; there was a thunderclap that echoed around the mountains with a deep rumble, and then it started to pour. It sounded like a freight train in a tunnel. The rain came in torrents, making it impossible to see anything, not even the trees in the yard. No picnic today. The window leaked as the rain blew against it. On top of everything else, this lousy town couldn't build a tight window frame. In winter, the cold air must pour into the room. My head still ached from the morning, and I needed to sleep.
The rain beating on the window reminded me of the first dinner I'd eaten in Budapest, in a quiet, frayed restaurant where I'd taken shelter from the darkness and the driving wind. The waiter had frowned when I spoke Russian to him, but when he saw I was alone, he softened slightly and assured me I was most welcome. He guided me to a table by the window, where the raindrops drummed against the old leaded panes.
In the candlelight, I watched a couple across the room. The woman cut her food elegantly; he drank some wine and murmured a few words.
She looked up slowly, their eyes locked, and then they laughed as if they hadn't a care in the world.
13
The sun coming through the window woke me, just after 5:00 p.m. The storm had passed, and the trees outside were sparkling. Manpo was still ugly, but the hills had softened in the early evening light. The road down to the river was not crowded. I was late for my meeting, but if they wanted a new truck, they'd wait a few minutes, whoever they were.
What they knew about the compound in the hills, and what else they might want for the information, was anyone's guess. I could throw in another basket of fish if necessary. Hell, I could throw in two baskets.
Twice I checked but could not spot anyone following me. Either the Military Security squad was eating dinner, or they had improved their technique after what happened to Chong.
A few empty Chinese trucks bounced past, racing to get back across the river before dark. Along the road, there were patches of vegetables-- plots the farmers tended on their own, so they worked late there, or sat and smoked if they wanted, leaning against fences they put up to keep out passersby. I stopped to ask the farmer nearest the road for directions to the Chinese restaurant. He didn't respond. When I asked again, this time in a less pleasant tone, another farmer ambled over. "No sense getting angry. He can't hear a word you're saying."
"What's his problem?"
"No problem, he just can't hear. More of a blessing, I'd say. Easier to be content if you don't have to listen to a lot of nonsense in meetings."
He paused and searched my face. "Your first time in Manpo?"
"Does it make a difference?"
"No difference. Just asked. Hard to be from here and not know where that restaurant is."
"So you know where it is?" I realized I'd made a bad mistake.
This might be a farmer, or it might be someone else. For sure, he kept an eye on the road, made it his business to talk to people. For all I knew his friend had perfect hearing. And there was no doubt they'd marked me.
"Over the next hill, the road meets a dirt path along the river.
There's a guard post, mostly young kids. Just ignore them and look for the steps."
"Thanks. And thanks to your friend." As I turned to go, the deaf farmer gave me a smirk.
The sun was setting and still there was plenty of road in front of me. I didn't really want to be at the river when it was dark. The truck traffic was down to one or two, carrying laborers standing in the back, enjoying the breeze. A few waved to me, as if being in the same place at the same time, even here, created a temporary bond. I waved back.
The third truck that passed me going toward the river pulled over, and two men in the back motioned for me to hurry. "Get on if you're going to Old Liu's or you'll miss dinner." I climbed up into the truck bed, just as the driver accelerated. Kang was sitting in the corner, smoking.
He nodded, motioned for me to sit beside him, then looked up at the sky. "Clear night. You planning to walk straight to hell?"
"I thought I was supposed to go to the river for a meeting. Incidentally, you never told me how I was supposed to get into that compound we saw this morning. You people must be very big on improvisation. In the Ministry, we like to plan things just a little. Especially when there are machine guns around."
"Swell. But there's a change of plans." The truck swerved, turned around, and headed back toward town. "You catch the next train to Pyongyang. Pak needs you at home. A body showed up at the Koryo. A foreigner."
"What about helping you?"
"I told you, change of plans."
"But my fish."
"Inspector, you've got no fish. And this truck has bald tires, not to mention a bad transmission."
"I suppose I'm not from Wonsan, either."
"Keep away from the border. You were never here."
"I need to pick up my bag."
Kang shifted his weight, and I saw my bag was under his leg. "The train leaves at two in the morning. More or less. When it stops at Kang gye, stay on. If anyone invites you off, do us both a favor and ignore them."
"What about my bill at the inn?"
"Never mind the inn."
"But the clerk."