The Plotters

by Un-su Kim

  The cross-eyed librarian had been knitting for thirty minutes straight. Each time Reseng lit another cigarette, she raised her head and fixed him with a frown. But he kept right on smoking, unfazed. He had no hope of getting anywhere with her anyway. In her mind, Hanja was distinguished and cool and Reseng was a dud.

  ‘What time did Hanja get here?’ he asked.

  Without looking up, she said, ‘Nine-thirty.’

  ‘When did you get here?’

  ‘Eight.’

  That was early. The library didn’t open until nine, so why had she come an hour early? There was nothing for her to do except clean. He really couldn’t understand her. Reseng looked at the door to Old Raccoon’s study again. It was still shut. If Hanja had come at nine-thirty, that meant he and Old Raccoon had been talking for over an hour. What on earth about?

  Whenever Hanja met with high-ranking government officials or other powers behind the throne, he told them Old Raccoon was like a father to him. Sometimes he dropped the word like and actually called him his father. The Doghouse Library’s gruesome ninety-year history lent Hanja, who was a relative newbie to the assassination business, an air of tradition and authority. Prone to paranoia and easily spooked, the geezers who pulled the strings still trusted Old Raccoon’s neat and tidy approach to getting the job done. Now and then, while hearing yet another story about Hanja’s name-dropping and riding on Old Raccoon’s coattails, Reseng thought maybe he really was his son. After all, a monster like Hanja could only have been sired by another monster.

  Reseng was lighting yet another cigarette when he heard shouts coming from Old Raccoon’s study. He and the librarian looked up at the same time. More shouts. Old Raccoon’s voice. The librarian looked at Reseng in bewilderment. Just then, Hanja came storming out. His face was flushed. He hadn’t shaved; even his hair looked uncombed. It was clear he’d rushed directly to the library the second he heard the plot to kill the old man had been changed. It was the first time Reseng had seen Hanja lose his composure. In fact, it was also the first time he’d heard Old Raccoon yell like a drunken sailor. Old Raccoon’s special skill was sarcasm, not volume. As Hanja stomped past, he spotted Reseng and stopped short. His eyes shot back and forth in shock from Reseng’s face to the wooden urn wrapped in the white cloth.

  ‘What is that?’ Hanja asked angrily.

  ‘Japanese sweets.’

  Hanja glared at Reseng, biting down hard on his lip as if he wanted to punch him. But he regained his cool and sneered instead. He started to say something but turned to the cross-eyed librarian.

  ‘I’m sorry, miss, but would you mind excusing us? I need to have a word with this gentleman.’

  She looked up at him blankly. He tipped his head ever so slightly to one side. All at once, she leaped up and switched back to the high-pitched, birdlike voice she used whenever she was being polite: ‘Why, yes, of course, not a problem!’ She dropped her knitting needles on the desk. But now that she was out of her chair, she got flustered, obviously unsure about where she was supposed to go, and turned to Hanja again with an awkward smile before rushing outside. After they heard the door click shut behind her, Hanja pulled out a chair and sat across from Reseng.

  ‘Mind giving me one of those?’ He gestured to the pack of cigarettes on the table.

  ‘I thought you hated things that stink.’

  Hanja frowned. He was clearly in no mood for messing around and looked haggard, like he hadn’t slept at all. Reseng pushed the cigarette pack and lighter towards him. Hanja tapped one out, lit it and took a deep drag before exhaling a long plume of smoke into the air.

  ‘It’s been so long, it’s making me dizzy.’

  He rubbed his eyes like he really was dizzy, or else the smoke was irritating them. They looked bloodshot. Hanja started to take another drag, but he changed his mind and stubbed out the cigarette in the ashtray. He stared for a long time at the wooden urn.

  ‘I specifically asked for the general’s body and you bring me a box of ashes. I can’t use ashes.’ Hanja spoke in a near whisper.

  Reseng didn’t respond.

  ‘How did you mess up such a simple task?’

  Hanja’s voice was soft, placating. Reseng guessed he was sounding him out in order to understand why he and Old Raccoon had gone against the plotter’s orders.

  ‘Look,’ Reseng said. He wanted to show him there was no point in prodding him on this, that nothing would come of it. ‘I’m just a hitman who works for a daily wage. Minions like me follow the orders we’re given, so obviously I have no idea what’s going on.’

  ‘No idea…’ Hanja tapped his fingers lightly on the table.

  Reseng reached over to retrieve his lighter and cigarettes and lit another.

  ‘How many do you smoke a day?’ Hanja asked.

  ‘Two packs.’

  ‘Do you not watch the news? Lung cancer is the most lethal form of cancer, and if you smoke, you’re fifteen times more likely to get it. For a heavy smoker like you, lung cancer is a given.’

  ‘I doubt I’ll survive in this business long enough to get lung cancer.’

  Hanja snorted.

  ‘You’re a funny guy. I’ve always thought that about you,’ Hanja said. ‘You’re tough to read, but you amuse me. I guess that’s why I like you.’

  Reseng crushed his unfinished cigarette out in the ashtray and lit up another. As Hanja kept on jabbering—‘Yeah, a real peach, you are’—Reseng fought the overwhelming urge to punch him right in the mouth.

  ‘That job was worth billions. That plot was going to be huge, the likes of which a mere day labourer like you could never imagine. But then Old Raccoon blew it before it even began.’

  ‘Gee, what a shame. All that money, gone. My heart bleeds for you.’

  ‘I’m sure I can salvage it. That is my specialty, after all. But who’s going to compensate me for the blow this has struck to my honour and credibility? That nasty Old Raccoon? Or some lowly goon like you?’

  Reseng felt disgusted to hear the words honour and credibility coming out of Hanja’s mouth.

  ‘Since when is your stupid honour more important than the general’s?’

  ‘What does a corpse need honour for? Leave him be and he’ll rot in the ground like he’s supposed to.’

  ‘I’ll be sure to ask your corpse the same question the day Bear cremates you. I’ll ask right before you’re shoved into the oven.’

  ‘See to it that you do. I can assure you that my corpse will give you the same answer I’m giving you now. We’re businessmen. Who would do something this stupid when there are billions of won at stake? If you’d just turned over the body like you were told, I could have packaged it into something worth selling by now. The politicians and the press can do whatever they want with it after that. I don’t care.’

  ‘You’re supposed to be Old Raccoon’s friend!’ Reseng shouted. ‘I don’t know why he puts up with a prick like you when everyone else refuses to.’

  Hanja let out an arrogant laugh. He seemed to relish the fact that Reseng had slipped and revealed his true feelings, as if that had been Hanja’s intention all along and now he’d got what he wanted from him.

  ‘See, I told you you’re a funny guy,’ Hanja said.

  Hanja had been planning to get the story out on the nine o’clock news. He wanted the assassination to be front-page, above the crease, in every single newspaper around the country. The death of a former North Korean general and key figure back in the days of the Korean CIA! And embedded in his corpse, an unfamiliar 7.62-mm slug that could only have come from a Russian-made AK-47. A suspicious assassination by firearm, positively reeking of foul play.

  The day after the body was discovered, yellow police tape would have gone up all around the old man’s house, and the normally deserted forest would have been suddenly buzzing with journalists and TV reporters blowing every little thing out of proportion, and bumbling cops who had no idea what they were supposed to be doing. The TV news would have demonstrated how th
oroughly scientific the search for clues was by filming the forensics team walking abreast as they noisily sifted through the forest at onecentimetre intervals, starting at the point of impact. The screen would have filled with the giant face of a balding expert, looking extremely serious as he prepared to give an interview. While pointing out exhibits 1, 2, 3 and 4—a shell casing, a chewing-gum wrapper, an empty biscuit packet, human faeces—found by the forensics team, the giant-faced expert would have spouted endless nonsense about the changing state of international affairs and the movements of the North Korean military. The next day, and the next after that as well, the news would have been full of commentary on the chewing-gum wrapper, the empty biscuit packet, the human faeces.

  What was it they were hoping to start? In this day and age, when you can book a seat on a small space shuttle, rocket up out of the atmosphere and stare slack-jawed down at the earth for five long, space-tourist minutes before descending, were they seriously thinking of trying to turn this into another worn-out spy-ring cliché? Not that anyone could have said where the plot originated or what its ultimate goal was. No one ever knew the full truth. In the plotters’ world, everyone avoided having any more information than absolutely necessary. The more information you had, the easier it was to become a target. Ignorance was survival. You couldn’t just pretend, you had to genuinely not know. Why would anyone bother asking how much you knew when they could simply kill you? That’s why everyone stayed inside their own small fence and didn’t stick so much as a single toe out of it. Put enough of those small fences together and you got a plot, woven together from ridiculously large and intricate connections and countless stakeholders. Perhaps they’d been planning to blow up a dam, and for budget reasons had forced a turnabout by assassinating a washed-up former general instead.

  At any rate, the plot had gone awry: the corpse they were planning to use had been reduced to ash. Just as Hanja had suggested, you can’t squeeze a media circus out of a pile of dust.

  Hanja checked his watch and stood up. He’d said all he had to say.

  ‘Time to go. Everything’s fucked because of you, and I’m the one stuck sorting it out.’

  ‘Because of me?’ Reseng asked wide-eyed.

  ‘You should have told me the plot had changed.’ Hanja’s voice dripped with pity. ‘I don’t know why you had to overstep your bounds and take the fall for him.’

  Hanja was much calmer and more relaxed now than when he’d burst out of Old Raccoon’s study. A consummate realist, he knew how to brush off mistakes. He might even have already thought of his next big stunt.

  ‘I think you have the wrong idea about yourself,’ Hanja added. ‘Let me give you some advice: don’t overestimate yourself. You’re nothing. That spot you’re standing on is all you’ve got. The second you step outside this library, you’re just another washed-up assassin from the meat market, just another disposable needle, used once and thrown away. So watch yourself. And go easy on the cigarettes. If you keep ruining your lungs with those two packs a day of yours, how are you going to be able to run for your life when the time comes?’

  Hanja gave him another of his arrogant, hateful smiles. He straightened his jacket as he prepared to leave.

  ‘Oh! Have I given you my card?’ he asked, his gestures exaggerated, as if he’d overlooked some critical detail.

  Reseng stared at him and did not answer.

  Hanja took a card from his gold-plated case and set it in front of Reseng.

  ‘You’ll need this. The library won’t be open much longer. And you should start thinking about your future, maybe learn to speak more politely. Talking down to your elders doesn’t look good. I’m telling you this for your sake,’ he said with a wink.

  ‘I talk down to anyone and everyone. And you are just anyone to me.’

  Reseng stuck Hanja’s business card in the ashtray and stubbed his cigarette out on it. Hanja watched him for a moment and shook his head, then took out another card and this time shoved it into Reseng’s jacket pocket. He patted Reseng on the cheek.

  ‘Grow up. How much longer do you think you’ll get away with acting cute?’

  Hanja strode out of the library, whistling as he went. As the door swung shut, Reseng heard Hanja cheerfully say to the librarian, ‘Wow, pretty chilly out here! So sorry to make you wait. The conversation just dragged on and on.’ He heard her response: ‘Oh, no, it’s not that cold!’ She sounded giddy.

  Reseng took out another cigarette. But he stared at it without lighting up. Hanja was right about one thing. Reseng should never have been hired to take out the general. Plotters didn’t use highly skilled assassins like him when the goal was only to stir up the news. That type of job belonged to washed-up hitmen whom no one ever hired anymore, or disposables fresh out of army training, still wet behind the ears and with no clue about how things worked.

  Whenever an assassination came to light, the first person the police looked for was the shooter. In the end, all they wanted to know was: ‘Who pulled the trigger?’ When they did find whoever pulled the trigger, they fooled themselves into thinking everything had been solved. But, when you think about it, the question of who pulled the trigger doesn’t matter at all. In fact, it might even be the least important question in an assassination case. What matters is never the shooter but the person behind the shooter. And yet, in the long history of assassinations, not once has that shadow person been clearly revealed.

  People believe Oswald killed Kennedy. But how could a bumbling idiot like Oswald have pulled it off? While the press and the police were busy fingering Oswald, the plotters of assassinations and the pullers of strings who’d orchestrated Kennedy’s death slowly and leisurely scattered in different directions and headed back to their nice, safe homes. There, they leaned back in their easy chairs, sipped their champagne and watched the news. A few days later, when Oswald the clown was eliminated on schedule by another third-rate assassin, the police closed the case, the looks on their faces saying, ‘Well, what can we do now that the key culprit is dead?’ Life is one big comedy. All the police have to do is find the shooter, and all the plotters have to do is eliminate him.

  The police track down a shooter, interrogate him, torture him. This simpleton who pulled a trigger without thinking becomes the media’s next hot topic faster than his bullet found its target. Everyone who knows him expresses surprise and alarm to learn he was capable of something so awful. The media digs up everything they can about him, tracks down anyone and everyone who might be even remotely related to him (though, in truth, they are completely unconnected), pixelates their faces for privacy and turns the simpleton into a legend. The funniest part is that the idiot who actually pulled the trigger knows next to nothing about what happened. He himself has no idea what he has done. Why on earth would the plotters give such important information to a has-been or a disposable? The plotters’ instructions to the assassin are always the same, regardless of country or era: ‘Who told you to think? Just shut up and pull the trigger.’

  Reseng lit the cigarette. It occurred to him that if he hadn’t cremated the old man, he might be a corpse as well right about now. What would Bear’s face look like while feeding Reseng’s body into the flames? Would that big teddy bear of a man weep hysterically, only to chuckle and bow over and over when Hanja handed him his cash, his tears having mysteriously vanished as he counted the bills twice? Reseng was on his second inhale when the cross-eyed librarian came back in, shivering from the cold. She wrapped the cardigan that she’d left on her chair around her shoulders and crouched under her desk, rubbing her hands over the space heater she kept there. She was down there for a long time before she finally came back up and sat in her chair.

  ‘For fuck’s sake, knock it off with the damn smoking already!’ she exclaimed, her face livid with contempt.

  Reseng stubbed out his cigarette. He looked over at Old Raccoon’s study. The door was still closed. Should he go in now? Or should he wait until Old Raccoon had calmed down? He couldn’t dec
ide.

  ‘What are you going to do if this place closes?’ he asked the librarian.

  ‘The library is closing?’ She looked shocked.

  ‘No, I said what if it closes.’

  She hesitated and said, ‘I’ll find a nice guy and get married.’

  ‘A nice guy, huh…’ Reseng chewed over her words and asked, ‘How about me?’

  She looked at him like he was crazy.

  ‘What’s wrong with you? Someone shoot you in the head while I was gone?’

  Her voice was so loud that it echoed off the domed ceiling. Reseng laughed. He picked up the urn and walked over to Old Raccoon’s study.

  When he opened the door, Old Raccoon was reading an encyclopedia out loud as always; he’d finished the Brockhaus Enzyklopädie and was rereading the Encylopædia Britannica. To Reseng’s surprise, he looked completely unruffled. He was sitting in the same chair he always sat in, with the same book, reading out loud in the same voice. What was the purpose of reading the same two books over and over? His reading habits made no sense to Reseng. Old Raccoon kept reading until Reseng had shut the study door and set the urn on the coffee table. Though he didn’t do it on purpose, the urn clacked loudly against the glass top. At last Old Raccoon looked up from his book and stared at the urn.

  ‘Why were you gone an extra day?’

  He didn’t sound angry or accusatory. Merely curious.

  ‘The general invited me to stay for dinner.’

  He thought that would invite follow-up questions, but Old Raccoon nodded. He set his reading glasses on the desk, got up and came over to the table, then unwrapped the white cloth from the urn and examined the box, briefly caressing the wood with his palm before opening the lid. The old man’s and Santa’s ashes were neatly wrapped in white paper. Old Raccoon unfolded the paper and felt the ashes.

  ‘Bear ground them really fine.’ He sounded pleased. He folded the paper back and closed the lid, then retied the white cloth. He put the urn on his desk.