by James Church
I stayed in the open doorway and replied with as much crispness as I could muster, in simple Korean so no one could miss my words, “I don’t understand what you are talking about, Superintendent.”
“Of course you wouldn’t.” He laughed loudly, went over to the phone, and held it up. “If there is anything in, on, or around this damned thing that doesn’t belong, I’ll throw it in the toilet. Dewww I make myself understood?” He walked into the bathroom, turned on the bathwater, and let it run a minute. “I’ll have a bath when there’s some hot water. Let’s go for our city tour now. What we don’t get done today, we can do tomorrow. I want to see some of the route in the morning sun, check the shadows.”
“Tomorrow isn’t possible. It’s a holiday, the anniversary of the army, lots of people dancing in the streets. I don’t dance, so I won’t be there.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No. If you want, maybe we can arrange for you to take part in the dancing. It’s very chaste, but people have a good time.”
“Is there a parade?”
“You mean a military parade? No, not this year.”
“Speeches? I don’t want to go and listen to speeches. Maybe I’ll just stay in my room and sleep tomorrow. Let’s cover as much ground as we can today.”
3
When we returned to the hotel later that afternoon, Boswell told me he could find his way to his room, thanked me for my cooperation to this point, and disappeared through the glass doors. The doorman bent back slightly, pretending to look up as the visitor strolled by, then grinned at me. I started the car so violently it frightened a woman walking up the drive, and she fled back onto the sidewalk. What was the man talking about, cooperation “to this point”? My shoulder hurt and my fingers were tingling. It made me think of the man in the brown suit, and the uses of ash wood. That was just as they’d intended.
Min was at his desk, reading a magazine, his face serene, like an October moon coming up over the hills. “Our Englishman all settled in? Where have you been?”
I’d calmed down on the ride to the office, but only slightly. Min could tell I was riled about something. I could see his ears trying to tune themselves to catch my tone. “He insisted on seeing the ‘lay of the land,’ as he put it. We drove around the city.”
“Unwise.” Min was instantly sorry he had offered any criticism and strained to pull back the word before it reached me.
“Don’t worry.” It was something I always said when I was worried. “I was followed by two SSD cars and someone I didn’t recognize the whole way, so no one can say we did anything untoward. The only time we stopped was in the square.”
“Did he like it?”
“He said the man with the beard didn’t look Korean.”
“What did you say?”
“I said he was probably right.”
“You didn’t tell him who it was?”
“I didn’t have the heart. If he doesn’t recognize Lenin, I’m not going to rub his nose in it.”
We both laughed, Min a little harder than necessary.
“So, where is he now?” Min asked in what he meant to be an offhand manner.
“Safely in his room, I hope. He’s probably going through the lamps and the outlets. He will take it as a personal affront if he finds anything, or maybe if he doesn’t. Give this duty to someone else, Min.” I paused. “Please, I don’t have time for it. You know as well as I do that they didn’t beat me up for practice.”
Min started to respond, then thought better of it. He tapped his pencil on the desk. “Did you check the security route? Let’s handle one thing at a time.” He looked out the window at the Operations Building.
I could feel my shoulder getting stiff, and I only had part of one pain pill left. “We did, in a manner of speaking. Mr. Oaktree said he needed to drive the same route again tomorrow, at exactly the same time of day the visitor will, so he can check the shadows and the sun angles. He wasn’t very happy to hear about the holiday; he kept asking why I can’t get a pass or something to allow us to drive around tomorrow. Don’t ask me why or what he expects to discover or why he seems to be in such a hurry. He wasn’t talkative, spent a lot of time drumming those big fingers of his on the dashboard.”
“Mr. Oaktree?”
“He’s very big, Min.”
Min put his hand over his eyes and slumped in his chair. “Can we not bring foliage into this, Inspector? It’s complicated enough for me to keep track of everything that is going on.”
“We could use it as a code name, on the radio,” I said, “if we still used radios.”
I kicked myself for raising the subject of devices. It would lead us onto cameras, and I didn’t want the topic to come up. Photography was a painful area for Min. A visiting public security delegation from Syria once refused to attend a banquet he was obliged to throw them. In the hotel lobby, they informed us with a lot of shouting and rude gestures that we had insulted them by confiscating their delegation leader’s camera. The delegation leader hopped up and down, bellowing that the trainload of army tanks was in plain view, none of them was covered with a tarp. This was true, but it was still against regulations to take any pictures of military equipment. In the middle of this, Min got called away to the Ministry. On his return, somewhat paler around the gills than when he left, he told me to give them the camera back.
“Please tell me he didn’t take pictures during your drive.” The chief inspector didn’t have to spell out what he was thinking. He looked queasy.
“Not many.” The Scotsman did not seem the type who would listen to even a short lecture on rules for taking photographs. And it was obvious he wouldn’t hand over his camera without a fight, probably a protest, and a lot of irritation. “Maybe a few more day after tomorrow. But not with me. I need off of this duty.”
Min groaned and went another shade more pale. “He understands he isn’t to step out on his own this evening?”
“Who cares? He’ll be obvious wherever he goes. There are plenty of checkpoints for the holiday already set up. He can’t get into trouble.”
“No, he can’t. But we can, if he gets lost, or trips on a curb in the dark and breaks his leg. Slip over to the hotel later and sit around the lobby, just to keep your eye on him, would you?”
“I really don’t want this duty. Don’t ask me why. Send someone else, someone his size.”
“You mean Li? Forget it.”
“Why? Maybe they’ll get along. Besides, my shoulder hurts. It hurts more at night. And, if you need another reason, I’ve got a lot of work to do on this whole mess before every single lead goes cold. People keep dying or disappearing. I think the robbery has something to do with it, though I don’t think the robbery means a damned thing by itself. No one gives a shit about the money.”
Again, Min put his hand over his eyes. He looked like he was getting a headache. “The leads are already frozen solid, Inspector, and you know it. Let’s don’t get ourselves tangled up in murder cases.” He paused a moment, then glanced up at me. “By the way, when am I going to get the report on your surveillance of the first bank clerk?”
“When I type it up, which will have to be when I find her again. I lost her in an underpass.”
“You lost her? That was a week ago. Why wasn’t I told?”
“She disappeared in the dark. I was going to tell you”—the pain flared in my shoulder—“but I was preoccupied.”
“You’ll have to get back to her as soon as we get rid of this Englishman.”
“He’s not English. He’s Scottish.”
“He doesn’t have a Scottish passport.” Min rummaged through a pile of papers on his desk.
“Don’t they teach geography in the schools anymore? Scotland doesn’t issue passports. It’s barely a country.”
“Calmly, Inspector, speak calmly. You’re giving me a headache. Yes, here. He’s connected with the Scottish police. It’s mentioned in the message we received from our man in Beijing this afternoon.”
Min considered that news, gloom gathering above his eyebrows. “He might take it as an insult. How was I supposed to know a superintendent outranks a chief inspector?”
I was silent, in what I hoped would seem a gesture of commiseration. “Never mind.” Min waved a hand. “We’re stuck with him. No one in the Ministry cares what the Scottish police think, or the English police, or the Germans. We’re only babysitting to please the Foreign Ministry.” Min looked where the calendar should have been on his wall. “He’s out of here in three days, Inspector. Surely you can keep him busy for three days. Show him the sights. Get him drunk at night. Maybe we’ll get lucky and he’ll have an upset stomach for a day.”
“What if he doesn’t drink?”
“Trust me, Inspector. I may not know about passports, but I know someone who drinks when I see him. This Superintendent James likes to drink.”
4
I needed to calm down. As I walked back to my office, it felt like my feet were barely touching the floor. Some people float when they’re happy; I do it when my blood pressure goes up. A piece of wood would soothe my nerves, but not just any piece. I drifted up to my desk and grabbed the chair to keep myself from floating higher. Where was it? I opened the desk and rummaged around, but it wasn’t there and that annoyed me so I slammed the drawer shut. Min shouted, “Hey,” from down the hall, and I thought, to hell with “Hey.” I remembered I had put it somewhere, but where? A piece of Burmese rosewood; someone had brought it back from a trip a few years ago, and I’d hidden it away for a serious emergency. Burmese rosewood is hardwood, extremely hard. It looks exotic. It feels exotic. It made me think of jungles and elephants just to touch it. And that was what I needed right now, to think about jungles and elephants, not oaks and giant Scotsmen and Prague. It was in my file cabinet, under a couple of empty envelopes. I looked at it for a few seconds, rolled it around in my hand, and wondered if that explained why visitors from Southeast Asia always seemed so low-key. Why did they smuggle drugs, I wondered, when they had all that Burmese rosewood?
Just as I sat down and started to relax, Little Li poked his head in the room. “You want to hear something funny?” He was smiling, and he wasn’t going to go away until I let him tell me why.
“Sure, at least once a day, everyone should hear something funny.”
Just then my cell phone rang. It was in my desk, but the sound poured into the room, bounced against the walls and out the window into the street. The guards at the front gate started laughing, I could hear it.
“Li,” I said, when the fairies stopped dancing, “you’re a smart guy.” Well, I thought, actually bigger than you are smart, but smart enough. “A sharp guy like you—you went through the tech class, am I right?”
Li shook his head. His face was carefully composed. That much he had down pat, keeping his face under control. “I heard about your phone, O. It never rang around me, but I heard about it. Some people in the Ministry dial you just so it will ring. They think it’s hilarious.”
“Is it?” If my blood pressure got any higher, I would float to the ceiling. Li would watch with that serious expression on his big face as I bobbed up and down. “You alright, O? Maybe you want to go get a glass of beer?” he’d ask after a minute or two, looking up at me. “I can always come back later.”
I gripped the armrests on my chair. Li watched me do it, watched carefully, and then he measured his words. “No,” he said slowly, very calmly, “I don’t think it’s funny.” He waited. He watched as my grip on the armrests loosened a little before he went on. “But I don’t know the first thing about those phones. And I hope they never assign one to me. What good are they, anyway?”
That did me good, hearing Li say that. I took a deep breath and let go of the armrests. “Before the phone rang, you were about to tell me something.”
He smiled. “Yeah, those construction boys, they put in another order for my transfer. And they attached a threat. If I don’t come along, they’ll fix it so I’m moved into one of those units up in the mountains.” The smile disappeared. “You know what I mean? Those guards.”
“You don’t want that duty, Li.”
“I know that, O. You think I don’t know that?” We stared at each other, then the smile crept back on his face. “This transfer order is going to get routed clear across the country.” He held it up for me to see. “They’ll never be able to trace it. But the signature sheet will show that it’s still in process.” He laughed. “They don’t know who they’re dealing with, do they, O?” He laughed again and walked down the hall.
Well, I thought, they’re not the only ones who don’t know who they’re dealing with. Who the hell am I dealing with? I put the little piece of rosewood within reach and started a new sketch for the bookshelves. There wouldn’t be much room left in the office if I ever built them, but the plans didn’t take up much space. After a few minutes, I felt myself about to start floating again. I put down the pencil, picked up the piece of rosewood, and closed my eyes. I couldn’t work on the plans because other things were racing around my brain. Like the bank robbery. Like the missing owner from Club Blue. Like Yakob, the phony stocking salesman. Yakob, who was working for a Russian service. I stopped to think about that. Lots of people worked for the Russian service; we had long lists of suspects. Apparently, he was being watched by SSD. Or just as likely, he was working for SSD. And he was in contact with Club Blue. Funny connection: Han, Yakob, and the missing owner from Club Blue.
My shoulder started to ache. New list. Stockings, a bank robbery, and an ash club that nearly crippled me. I get knocked around with an ash club, and a few days later, out of nowhere, a Scottish policeman shows up, unannounced. That doesn’t happen. It never happens. Visitors don’t just show up. The Ministry has an entire wing of people whose job it is to screen visitors, slow them down, think up reasons they can’t be admitted: not yet, not now, not ever. You have a question? The answer is no. But I didn’t ask the question. Doesn’t matter, the answer is still no. They get paid for that. And they don’t get paid to let visitors suddenly appear on our doorstep.
I thought that over. No, the Ministry wouldn’t make that mistake. But what if the Ministry didn’t have any choice in the matter? What if the Ministry got a yellow envelope with a black seal on it, on Saturday, early in the morning, early when it was still dark? “You will direct Office 826 to be at the airport to meet the Air Koryo flight in order to receive a British police official. More to follow.” Something like that. Another list. Bank robbery–ash club–Scotsman. My shoulder was throbbing.
What else? The disappearing bank clerk. She’d stopped to talk to an old man with bad feet. Maybe he was a lookout. I shook my head and put the piece of rosewood down. The stuff was making me hallucinate.
5
“I found something in my room, Inspector.”
“Congratulations. There’s no extra charge.”
“This isn’t a joking matter. I told you if I found something, I would rip it out.”
“So you did.”
“It is infuriating that you treat guests this way.”
“My apologies, Superintendent. Of course, no other security service in the world would do such a thing. We are the only ones.”
Boswell rubbed his boulder-sized chin. “I’m not saying we do, I’m not saying we don’t. But if we ever did, it would only be after going through strict, formal approval procedures.”
“And wh
at would those be?”
“One must go to a magistrate.”
I slapped my forehead. “Yes, I see now. If only we had someone in a powdered wig give his okay, then that would make us part of the civilized world! Let me put that in the next set of recommendations for the Central Committee.”
“Don’t get sarcastic with me, Inspector. The question is one of limits. A political system without limits is a menace to its people. And magistrates don’t wear wigs.”
“More ignorance on my part. Ah, Superintendent, how difficult this must be for you, being amongst such savages.”
“You’re not helping your cause, Inspector.”
By now I had forgotten I was standing in the hotel room assigned to a foreign police official, with the door closed, something that had certainly already been observed by the floor-watcher. “You think we don’t have limits?”
“Do you? And what would those be?”
“How many of these devices do you actually think we can afford? You’ve just eaten a hole in someone’s budget. You didn’t have to step on it, you know. You might at least have removed it gently and wrapped it in toilet paper for them to claim later.”
That broke a piece off the iceberg. Boswell laughed so hard he nearly choked; he dissolved in laughter; he danced around the room laughing, bumping into furniture, slapping his hands on the wall, and then, in what was probably meant as a gesture of fellowship, he clapped me on my left shoulder. Pain was instantaneous; I could hear it as it roared down my body. I almost cried but sat down instead on his bed and put my head between my legs, which only made my shoulder hurt more. Boswell stopped laughing at once and, in a practiced gesture, opened a bottle of whiskey he’d put on his side table and poured some into a glass. “Drink this,” he said. “My God, man, what’s the matter with you?” I looked up lamely. “Drink it, man,” he shouted at me. “Hav ya gone deef?”