A Corpse in the Koryo io-1

by James Church

  We laughed for days about that at the office. Nothing is like that. Nobody is like that. But it's what you people want to believe. Straightforward, direct, what's the term?"

  "Transparent."

  "Ah, Richie, you are trying to read my mind. You shouldn't do that.

  No, not transparent. It doesn't matter. I'm not saying your way is wrong.

  It doesn't exist, not for me."

  "So nothing is ever solved. That is a grand excuse if ever I heard one."

  "An excuse? Could you live with uncertainty, moving shapes and shadows, morning, noon, and night, my friend? The mountains have become the only certain thing in my life. When they disappear, I die."

  "Glorious words, Inspector. Put them to music and they'd make a fine, sad drinking song. But we're not here to sing, are we? You're to talk, I'm to listen." He wrote something in his notebook and then turned on the tape recorder but quickly turned it off again. "The tragedy, Inspector, is that you have poetry in your soul, but all my ears are trained to hear is facts."

  "Don't worry about it, Richie. There's less poetry as you go along."

  5

  That night, I couldn't sleep. I was reading when Song stepped into the room, pale and scared. There was blood on his shirt, lots of it. "Come, quickly, to the temple." I didn't ask but followed him silently up the steep road; he walked so fast, it was hard to keep up. The rain had stopped, but there were enough lingering clouds to cover the moon.

  The road was dark, and the sound of the river, swollen with the afternoon's storm, echoed against the hills. At the gate to the temple compound, Song was waiting for me. "In there." He pointed. "The low building." He was hoarse, like someone who had been screaming. "I'm staying here." He looked down at his shirt. "You couldn't pay me enough to go back in there."

  Before dawn I was on my way north to Kanggye, driving fast. That early, I didn't expect any other traffic. I stuck to the middle of the highway, because if I hit a pothole at the speed I was going, the car's frame would probably break apart. When the gas gauge showed empty, I pulled over.

  The gas can in the trunk was only half full; it might get me to Kanggye but no farther. Song owed me, for the gas, for everything. He knew he owed me, and he knew that someday I was going to collect.

  6

  The Inn of the Red Dragon in Kanggye was a wreck. The TV lay on its side, smashed. I stepped on the pages of a paperback book scattered over the floor. A moan came from the back room. The clerk was lying on a bed, his face to the wall. He rolled over when he heard me at the door. He had been pistol-whipped, badly.

  "Welcome back, Inspector. I don't have any vacancies." It was hard to understand him because his face was so bruised.

  "Who?"

  He coughed and his body tensed in pain. Maybe a rib was broken, too. "What difference does it make? I don't keep score anymore. They asked about you."

  'And?"

  "I told them I didn't have any registration papers for anyone of your description."

  "They believe you?"

  "That's when they broke my ribs. What do you think?"

  I turned to go. "I'll be back. I've got to get to Manpo."

  He shook his head. "Too late. You'll never make it."

  "I need some gas."

  He wiped the blood that was oozing from his mouth. "Grandma Pak might have some gas coupons." He moaned again and rolled back to face the wall. "If she's still alive."

  The place where Grandma Pak usually sat was empty. The blanket was still on the floor, along with her eyeglasses. The frames were bent and one lens was shattered. At least it wasn't a bullet hole. I looked along the bottom of the wall for a loose board, anything that might be a place to hide papers. In the corner was a different, older party newspaper. April 15, 1962. The editorial on the front chattered about loyalty in bold letters.

  Underneath the newspaper was a small wooden box. Loyalty covers a lot of sins, they like to say. Maybe that was what she figured.

  The box felt worn and smooth, the corners rounded from being handled.

  It had been made without nails, from Siberian chestnut. It was notched along the top to make the lid fit perfectly; the grain on each side matched precisely all the way around. I didn't have to look twice to know whose hand it was from. My grandfather worked four months, morning and night, on that box. Most of the detail work was on the inside: a carving of a tiger on a rock, with a pine forest stretched below. You could even see the pinecones. I opened it up. There were some old train schedules and a black-and-white photograph of a young woman, her mouth set, staring into the camera with wide, dark eyes. Underneath were three gas coupons, the fancy ones with scenes of workers embossed on the front and farmers in a rice paddy on the back. They had expired twenty years ago. I put two in my pocket, then put the box in the corner again, under the newspaper. Maybe Grandma Pak would find her way back. I wanted the box there if she did.

  7

  The gas station at the edge of the city looked deserted; the front gate was shut tight. A sentry waved me away when I pulled up. An old man wearing a cloth cap looked at me from behind the bars of the gate.

  "Everything's closed. You can't get nothing here." I handed the coupons to him. He studied them closely, then said something to the sentry. The gate sagged so badly it took the two of them to swing it open.

  The old man put out his hand. "Give me the keys. You can't drive in without a military pass. You can sit over there if you want." He indicated a concrete bench on a patch of dirt next to a low fence. He got in and started the car. "A Volvo. Not many of these left. None in Hamhung as far as I know. And only a few in Pyongyang." I watched the car pull up to the fuel pump at the far end of the compound. The sentry dragged the gate shut and locked it.

  A rose bush grew along the fence behind the bench, climbing up from the ugly oil-stained pavement to make a thick wall. The flowers were red, a shade lighter than the girl's blouse had been. The bush was pruned and tended, fed and watered. Each leaf was a glossy green, free of pests or disease. At night, when the air was still and no trucks were spewing exhaust along the street, this spot must have been a perfumed silence.

  The old man was standing next to me. "Even in this sadness, in this ugly time, the roses want to bloom," he said quietly. "Here are your keys. You better keep these gas coupons. Or maybe put 'em back where they came from." He touched the bill of his cap in a small salute and watched from the side of the road as I drove down the town's main street, past a half-ruined guesthouse called the Rainbow Inn and a park where a woman and a frail girl were sweeping imaginary leaves from the gravel walkway.

  At the edge of town, the street made a sharp bend and gave way to a two-lane, rutted dirt track. I couldn't drive fast, but with a full tank of gas, I made it to just outside Manpo with only one stop. A bridge was down, and two soldiers were directing traffic through a field to a ford across the river. They weren't checking papers, but when I parked at the water's edge, waiting my turn, one of them looked at my plates, then stuck his head in the window. "You really from Hamhung?"

  "Nah. Never been there." From his accent I could tell he wasn't from that part of the country. "Hamgyong people are kind of thick. I won this car in a card game with a couple of them." He laughed and waved me on, forgetting that he meant to bum a cigarette.

  8

  The four tables had been overturned, their legs snapped off and broken into pieces. Each of the vases was shattered, the flowers strewn around the room. On the rear counter, a pool of blood was soaking the pages of a book that lay face down.

  Kang sat on the floor with his back against the wall. "I've been waiting for you, Inspector." He spoke each word distinctly. "What took you so long?" He saw me grip the pistol in my coat pocket.

  "Don't worry. I'm not armed."

  "Somehow, I don't believe you, Kang. I never should have."

  He looked around the wreckage of the room. "Inspector, if you don't mind, I'm not in the mood for your moralizing. You know, I hoped you would get here firs
t. But you were behind them each step of the way, weren't you?" Fie tapped his watch and held it to his ear. "Battery's gone." He smiled faintly. "Sound familiar?"

  1 took the pistol out of my pocket and held it at my side. "What happened here?"

  "We don't have much time left. You're allowed one guess, Inspector."

  His smile faded. "They came looking for me. And now they're desperate.

  They know they have to get this done." He glanced back at the counter, as if he still couldn't grasp what had happened, but from the set of his shoulders, I could see that he knew.

  "Do you know where they took her?"

  "Somewhere her screams will be muffled." He looked up at the ceiling, but his eyes were half closed; he must have been watching something ugly inside his head, because he grimaced. "Do us a favor, Inspector. Shoot me. You hate me, and you'll be a hero. They'll give you a medal."

  "You killed Pak. If you didn't squeeze the trigger, you caused it.

  Your whole network has been torn up by the roots, people flung like garbage across the landscape. So I will shoot you, Kang. But if I do it right now, your soul may float free. First, I want to know it's soaked in regret, that it will drag around the stinking mud into forever. I don't want to look up and think of you near the stars."

  "That's your problem, Inspector, not mine. You have a funny urge to judge me. Go ahead, but we both know you can't. Pak was my friend. He told me to get away and leave him. It wasn't the first time."

  The pistol jerked up in my hand and I fired one shot near Kang's head almost before I knew what I'd done. "Shut up." I could taste the anger; it was all I could do to keep from taking aim and firing again. I wouldn't miss the second time.

  Kang didn't flinch. "Alright, you don't believe a word I say. In that case, there's not much to discuss."

  "I've got most of this figured out, Kang. Only a few things I don't understand."

  I waited, but Kang was silent. "For openers, you set me up."

  Wrong," he broke in, and then stopped himself from saying more.

  "Military Security was after you because you were poaching on their territory, smuggling cars. You tried to distract them by trailing me in front of them. You brought me up here to Manpo to meet Lena, threw me in her bed, and when that got you nothing, you dragged her down to Hyangsan to try again. That didn't work, so you killed her."

  It was so quiet in the room that it felt as if I were alone. Kang didn't move; his breathing had become shallow and fast. "What are you talking about?"

  "I ran across Lena at Hyangsan." I waited, but again Kang sat silently. "She said she was there for the tourists, but why all of a sudden would she go down there? Funny thing, you were there just before I arrived.

  Did you set it up, so I'd meet her again?"

  Kang ignored my question; he didn't even seem to be listening anymore.

  "We sat on a hillside and talked for a few minutes. About her father.

  And Pikkusaari. Interesting fellow, is our friend Pikkusaari. That night I got a frantic visit from the local security man. There were sounds coming from one of the buildings at the temple. He went in to check.

  Then he panicked and came for me. I went up there. Lena was inside, lying in the mud. She had been beaten." I paused because I could hardly speak with the picture in my mind. "She was still alive, but you couldn't recognize her face. It was gone. It took her a few minutes to die." I took a deep breath. "It was like watching an animal."

  Kang's body slumped. His voice was drained, dead. "You can't believe I would do that. She was supposed to leave Hyangsan a few hours after I did. We were getting out of the country. I loved her. I wouldn't kill her."

  "She wasn't going anywhere with you." The anger was building in my throat, but I knew Kang could hear the doubt creeping in. I could hear it myself. "Were you ever with her at the Koryo?"

  "Go to hell, Inspector."

  "Were you in that room in the Koryo on the eighth floor with her?"

  "What business is it of yours?"

  "A blue button in the closet of the room where the body was found.

  It was hers, wasn't it?"

  "Congratulations, Inspector." Kang applauded gently. "Does that help you fill in some details of your investigation?" He stopped clapping and rested his face in his hands. When he looked up, he was in control of himself, but finally I could read his eyes. "She liked the Koryo. She said that room reminded her of an old movie. I always had a vase of flowers there for her." He stopped and looked at the crushed remains of the purple flowers on the floor. "We're about to get company, Inspector.

  They'll be circling back any minute, they always do. Have you any idea what is going on?"

  "You mean the army trucks in Pyongyang?"

  Kang's laugh was short and bitter. "So the answer is no, you don't know. You've been stumbling after that dead Finn the whole time." He kicked at a table leg lying at his feet. "This is what's about to happen.

  The furniture is being replaced. I mean all of it. The iron broom of history.

  Prisons emptied, old wrongs righted, intelligence operations gone awry dragged back into the sweet cleansing sunlight." Kang laughed again, with less bitterness. "Sunlight is our new god, Inspector. Don't you love the sun? All bad things happen in darkness, but only good can come of light." With an effort, he turned to look back at the countertop.

  I could see he was forcing himself to commit the whole scene to memory. "This took place in the light, Inspector. This, right here, all in the name of vanquishing evil. This is goodness in the flesh." He gestured around the room, his hands fluttering like a bird with a wounded wing, wondering how to land.

  "Why do they want you so badly? It can't be just car smuggling. I saw Kim gun down one of your men two days ago. He gave me some story about enemy agents, but what he meant was, he had license to kill your people. It's something that happened a while ago, something you and Pak were involved in. Do you know what Pak had in his office?

  Files on Japanese. That's it, isn't it? This big decision on Japan, this allhell-breaking-loose decision on Japan."

  "Close, Inspector. Very close. But you're off in one respect. Your grandfather would have realized it immediately." Kang started to stand.

  My hand went to my pistol, and he settled back, though not in fear.

  "They could drag in anyone, actually. Anyone would do. But it would feel wrong somehow. They really think they can purge themselves of evil spirits, that they can be good and sound once the evil is chased down and destroyed. This is the day of reckoning. The leadership is looking for the magic key to the brilliant future. They think they have a chance to step across the river, watch a million ugly deeds from the past sweep off toward a deep, forgiving ocean. But those damned evil spirits are clinging to their trouser cuffs, muddy reminders of bad decisions, people who know the history and can't forget, files that can never be burned because they aren't on paper. They're here." Kang touched his chest.

  "And you, you are the evil spirit?"

  "Not only me. The whole department, and more. Even you, maybe.

  You are too much like your grandfather for them."

  "They're going after your whole department?"

  "We know too much, too much paper, too many orders stamped, signed, and dated about too many abductions."

  "But that's not what is motivating Kim."

  "No, it's something else. The man likes blood. He hates my people, and he wants to see them bleed. Military Security has been trying to sink its teeth into us for years. We operated outside their universe, in a reality they despise, and it drove them crazy that we were out of reach.

  We knew once they got an opening, they would exploit it for all they were worth to cut our throats." Kang paused.

  "The man in the colonel's uniform, in the wrecked car on the highway.

  It must have happened after I drove back into town."

  "You almost saw it. The first car, the black one that you didn't get on film, was Kim's. Ours was not far behind. A f
ew of my people were able to break out as soon as we realized what was happening, but I couldn't get everyone to safety all at once. That's why we started the car-smuggling operation, funds for the evacuation. There wasn't time for much organization, so we improvised. We didn't know Kim was using the highway, too, for his own smuggling ring. He was furious. You saw the results. It gave him extra incentive to go after my people when Military Security was given the order to roll up the Investigations Department. A handful of us are on the run. I should have been out days ago."

  "But you're still here." I watched him sink down further against the wall. He'd almost given up; it was over and it didn't matter anymore.

  "You were waiting for Lena to join you." Nothing, he didn't move a muscle, but in his stillness I could see I was right. "You were going to Lake Keitele." I heard myself say it even before the thought had formed in my mind, because it was suddenly so clear. "And your daughter, that's really why she was here, close to the border. Because you knew the day would come. You've been getting ready for years. Even now, someone's waiting across the river for you. In a nice shiny black Mercedes.

  It's Pikkusaari, isn't it? And that other Finn, the corpse in the Koryo, he was part of your operation, too. That's why they dumped the body in that particular room. They knew you used it sometimes. It was Kim's way of playing with you, of telling you that he was closing in."

  Kang shook his head. "No, not across the river. In Harbin."

  I heard it click into place. Not organic, mechanical, just like Pak said. "Hyesan-Musan-Najin-Harbin. The train schedule, the one you took from me in the truck. That was your escape route, wasn't it?

  Where were you going to meet Lena, in Najin?"

  "The clerk in Manpo was supposed to give me that schedule. Why he gave it to you, I'll never know."