by James Church
Boswell walked ahead of me for about fifteen minutes up a steep slope, slippery with pine needles. At a place where the trail widened, we passed two more MPS officers slouched against a tree. We didn’t stop to chat. The path became steeper, and Boswell was starting to breathe hard when we came to a fast stream. We crossed on a line of boulders that barely served as a bridge. The far bank was more thickly wooded, and the path disappeared.
“Good and lost, what else could go wrong? So typical of this place, I have to laugh.” Boswell was swearing under his breath, thinking I couldn’t hear him. “A path leading nowhere, then dissolving into nothing, what a fucking country.” He swatted a bug on the back of his neck. “Let’s get out of here. I don’t need to be mucking about in these hills. There’s nothing for me to see.”
“No, we’re not lost. The path is around here somewhere.” It had to be. Paths didn’t just give out like that. Maybe in Scotland, but not in these hills. I took a few steps off to one side. “Here! You see?” I started up the narrow track and in a minute or so emerged into a clearing with a small, oddly shaped temple. Next to it was a ramshackle watchman’s hut. An old man shuffled from around the back, a thin brown dog at his heels. The dog trembled and wagged its tail until the old man muttered something and the dog dropped to the ground. It was quiet all of a sudden. Not a sound. Even the deep voice of the water rushing over the rocks disappeared.
“Nice dog.” I smiled and raised my hand to scratch the dog’s head. As soon as I did, the dog cowered and crawled behind the old man. “I’m not going to hit him, just give him a pat.”
“Dog doesn’t know that, now does it? People come by here, do all sorts of things to the dog. Never hurt nobody, young pup like this, but people don’t care.” The old man gave me a sly smile. “He likes the sound of money in the shrine box, though, makes him sit up and bark.”
“I’ll bet it does.” I walked over and stuffed a few small bills into the slit in the box sitting on the raised wooden platform. The dog sat up and barked twice. “Must have good hearing; those bills don’t make a lot of noise.”
“Dogs can hear a lot more than most people. Good judges of character, too.” Boswell emerged from the trees. The old man turned slowly in his direction. “Welcome, friend. The dog likes you.”
Boswell whistled, and the dog walked over. “Pretty thin, but good, alert eyes,” he said. “Might learn some commands, if you give him a chance. Not a lot of sheep around here, I take it. But any dog likes to work for his keep.”
The old man cocked his head, unsure whether he was hearing Korean or not. Then he nodded. “Scraps mostly. Dog here eats what I eat.” He pulled the waist of his trousers to show he didn’t eat much. “No harm in being thin, for either of us. As for work”—he laughed—“the dog and I have an agreement. As little as possible, and then rarely.”
“Good location for a shrine. You must be from around here.” I wanted to move the conversation beyond dogs, which I had the feeling Boswell would happily spend the rest of the day discussing.
“Nope.” Then a long silence from the old man. As we stood there, the sound of the stream returned, along with the drone of a bee moving in and out of the blossoms of a cherry tree that grew beside the shrine.
Boswell looked up at the sky. I nodded at the old man. “You’re not from around here?”
“I am.”
“Ah. Then, by ‘nope’ you mean a bad location for a shrine.”
“Very bad. Not far enough from the water, not set right with its back to the mountain. Nothing very good about it. But here it sits. You’d think someone would have changed its alignment, falls down often enough so it would be easy to do. But no, every time, it’s put back together just the way it was.” The old man shook his head. “Last time it was rebuilt was maybe sixty or seventy years ago.” After a moment, he shrugged and sighed. “That’s how things get to be like they are.”
“Yes,” I said. The old man sounded like Yang. It made me uneasy. Something else was making me uneasy, too, though I couldn’t figure out what. Boswell had moved over and was pretending to watch the bee, but I could tell he wanted to follow the conversation, if it ever got anywhere. “You pretty much see everyone who goes up this trail, I’d assume.” Sometimes a new tack helps with these old fellows.
“Hard to miss them, unless you’re blind,” he said.
I looked at the man’s eyes. “You’re blind, aren’t you?”
“It depends,” he said, “on your definition.”
“We’re going up the trail.” I started to point in the direction we were heading but it seemed foolish. “Did a patrol pass this way?”
“They did.”
“You know where they went?”
“I do. It will take you five, maybe ten minutes to get there.”
I nodded at Boswell, who fell in behind me. “We’ll be back.”
“Yes, you will, unless you plan to swim down. Only one path. I’ll be here whenever you get tired of looking around. Right here,” said the old man, “same as always.”
4
The stream went around a sharp bend and formed a series of deep pools, backed up behind piles of rocks. It was hard to tell if they had fallen naturally from the hills above, or if a few hundred years ago someone had rolled them down. The pools were mostly protected from the water’s flow. It was a quiet place; the shadow of the hills kept it out of the sun. A few small trees grew all the way down the bank to the water’s edge.
The body had been pulled up onto the rocks. I wished it had been left alone, but there was no sense complaining at this point. The twoman patrol sat on the farthest pile of rocks, beyond the shade in the sunlight. They had their shoes off and were dangling their feet in the water. They stood up when they saw me. One of them straightened his belt, which told me he was new. The other one stared at Boswell, said something to his companion, and looked away. He wasn’t so new; he’d probably sold his belt. If he’d had boots, he would have sold those, too.
I looked around the path for a moment, not expecting to find much. Boswell stood off to the side. “If you need me, Inspector, I’m here. But I don’t want to get in your way.”
“Let’s go down and take a look, Superintendent. Maybe you’ll see something that I miss.”
The body had been in the water awhile, but it didn’t look to me like it had been two days. Min must have misheard the report, or maybe the patrolmen had said they had been sleeping on the rocks for two days with their toes in the water. I knelt down. It was the Club Blue’s owner; his features weren’t damaged, though the flies were pretty thick. His head had been bruised on the side, but nothing you would have thought would kill him.
“He looks to me like he was plenty strong.” Boswell stood a little way off with a handkerchief to his nose. “Big shoulders. He could have slipped and fallen into the stream, I suppose. Maybe he hit his head on the way down, knocked himself out and drowned.”
“We’ll see. If he drowned, they must have drugged him first.”
Boswell dropped the handkerchief for a moment. “What makes you say that?” He took a breath, then gagged and put the handkerchief back in place. Looking at him, you wouldn’t have guessed he was so delicate.
“He wasn’t shot. The old man at the temple would have heard it. A shot in these hills would echo, even a pistol.”
“They could have knifed him. Who can tell at this point from that soggy mess?”
“Maybe, it looks like there are plenty of wounds on the body. Look at his hands.” He was missing two fingers on his left hand. And his left ear had been nearly torn off. Flies didn’t do that, and there were no animals in these hills that would have chewed on a body. “Getting him down from here will be a chore. It would be good if someone could check it at the scene, but that won’t happen. Anyway, the patrol already moved him.”
“Who is he?”
“Not exactly sure. I met him at that club we were at yesterday.”
“The one who kept shaking my hand? No, this is a dif
ferent guy.”
The patrolmen had put on their socks and shoes and were making their way over to where we were standing. I motioned to them to wait. “This is the previous manager. I didn’t think he was involved in anything serious, but it looks like I was wrong.”
“Your bank robbery?”
“What would make you say that, Superintendent?”
“I don’t know, just a guess.”
I thought a moment. “Could be you’re right. Maybe somebody thought he was going to talk when he was supposed to stay quiet, or maybe they thought he was keeping something they thought was theirs. In those clothes, he didn’t come up here for a picnic or a day of hiking in the hills. That soggy mess is his work clothes. I guess the crease in those trousers is gone for good.”
Boswell looked away and gagged again. “Sorry, I don’t do well with this sort of thing.” He took a moment to regain his composure. “There, well, that’s better. Just a body, after all. Sounds like you already knew a lot about him.” He was still a little pale.
“This is my case, Superintendent.” I walked over to the patrol. The new officer was uneasy; he kept his eyes averted.
“I thought we should leave the body where it was,” the new man muttered, “but then we remembered the regulations said to preserve the evidence, so we figured we’d move it out of the water. I remembered the regulation.” He looked at me for a moment but decided it wasn’t going to get him anything.
“Well, by moving the body you ruined the evidence. Remember that next time. Just go back to the rock and stay out of the way. I’ll call someone to come up from Pyongyang to take care of what’s left. They’ll want a statement from both of you. And it better be accurate to the last stone. I don’t know how you’re going to explain that your shoes were off when I arrived, but you’ll think of something.”
5
“Come, let’s talk, my friend.” I started to take the old man’s hand, but he was already moving toward the step that ran along the front of his hut. He sat and patted the place beside him. Just from that, I knew he would tell me the truth.
“You’re a security man, I can tell. But who is your friend over there?” He nodded at the tree, where Boswell was standing. “He talks funny. Nice man, I can tell, but who the hell taught him to speak Korean?”
“Foreigner.” I paused. “From Scotland.”
The old man nodded. “I know Scotland, I fought a company of Scots not far from here during the war.” He lifted his face toward the sun. “That’s when I lost my sight, in that battle. If you can call it a battle. It wasn’t much, no big thing. Didn’t turn no tide. Just a tiny shootout, me and them. They found me lying in a hole. My face was covered with blood and I couldn’t see. I heard their voices. One of them jumped down and turned me over. I heard the safety click of a pistol up top the hole. But that one, he washed my face with a wet cloth, left me a biscuit, put it in my hand is what he did. Then they went away. The next night I ate the biscuit and crawled toward the sound of voices. I could hear Chinese, but I didn’t want them to find me. They would have left me to die. But it was just a Chinese officer talking on the radio. This shrine was being used as a command post for a company of our boys, with a Chinese advisor attached. Our troops were nervous, they almost shot up the bushes when they heard me crawling toward them, but then I shouted who I was and they came for me. They said they didn’t have any medicine or anything, but they gave me some food, and got me some water from the river. It was cold, tasted good, just like it does now. They told me to stay at the shrine. I’ve been here ever since. So I know Scotland, that’s what brought me here, you might say.”
Boswell had moved closer. He was pale and his eyes were closed. We listened to the river for a moment, and the wind in the trees. Then I stood up. “Don’t let it bother you,” I said to him. “The country’s littered with these stories. Your countrymen came over, shot up the mountains, then went home to your peaceful valleys and trout streams. We were left here.” I looked around the hills that surrounded the spot.
The old man got to his feet and faced Boswell. “Never mind,” he said in a strong, clear voice and then again, but softer this time, “Never mind.”
“I need to ask you a question or two. Alright?” He knew a lot, and he was only going to tell me a little. That’s how he survived out here. I’d take what he gave me. People think the truth is bulky, like a big package. More often, it comes in small drops, like rain from the eaves. You can listen to it all night long, but in the morning when you go outside, there might not be anything there.
“Go on.” The old man turned his face to me. “You want to know about the body in the river.”
“I do. What do you know about it?”
“Nothing. The dog was awfully upset. She howled a little. It was two nights ago, maybe more.” He could have lost track of time, but I didn’t think so. Maybe that’s why the report the barefoot patrol had phoned in mentioned “two days,” because they heard the same story from the old man. “She took me over to that group of rocks upstream, slippery at night with the mist, so we took our time. I nearly stumbled over the body, but I heard the flies and stopped. The dog froze, she doesn’t like dead things. I think death confuses her.” He scratched the dog behind the ears. “A group of strangers walked by here earlier that day. Not very friendly.”
How could he stumble on the body if it was floating in one of those pools? I looked over at Boswell; he was wondering the same thing.
“Besides their not being friendly,” I said, “what did you notice?” I’d have to come back, without Boswell, to question the old man again.
“Talked sort of strange, but they were Korean, not like your friend here.” He turned toward Boswell. “No offense.” He turned back to me. “One of them asked if the path went very far upstream, and how deep the water was.”
“How many of them were there?”
“Three went up. One of them walked funny, like he was dragging his leg. He was taking short breaths, sort of painful. Only two of them were talking. They were saying something about snakes. I pretended not to notice.”
“How many came back?”
“Guess.”
6
We walked down the path in silence; the car with the security men was gone but there was a note on my windshield. I crumpled it up and threw it away. That bastard didn’t even acknowledge my presence, and he’s leaving me notes?
Boswell looked at me over the top of the car before he got in. “Whew.” He shook his head. “Warn me next time, would you?”
“You mean the war story? That was nothing,” I said. “You should see the ones without legs.”
He pointed at the wad of paper I’d thrown on the ground. “Aren’t you going to read that note?”
“Why bother? It’s from that guy who was standing in the road. He didn’t look very busy. What do you think he was doing?”
“Keeping an eye on us?”
It occurred to me that Boswell might have hit on something. Han might just have been keeping track of where the two of us were. Well, if SSD—or whoever he worked for—had enough manpower to toss around like that, let them choke on it.
“Me, most probably,” I said. “I think I’ve seen him around. He’s from a different section altogether. The paperwork will never get to our office. He won’t file it, anyway. Too much trouble.”
“What about those two uniformed guys up the path?”
I shrugged. “They were probably sent to watch the one in the road.”
“You’re kidding.”
I grinned. “Yeah. Get in. Let’s not stand here all the dooh-da day.”
Boswell looked surprised. “Where the hell did you learn that, Inspector? Did you know it’s from an old American song?”
“I know where it’s from. I have a degree from the University of Karaoke. You ever heard ‘Red River Valley’? Very sad song, some people tear up, especially when they’ve had a lot to drink. I can sing it on the way back.”
The superintendent sh
ook his head. “Perhaps another time, Inspector. I’m not in the mood for a sad tune right now.”
7
I took another route, not too much out of the way, but I didn’t want to go by the steam shovel again. Partway back into the city, we passed through a village. It was covered with coal dust from a factory set behind the fields, and even in the bright sunshine the houses and the inhabitants carried a grimness that made me wish Boswell had stayed in his hotel room. His eyes were closed, and I thought he might be asleep, but then he opened them and said, “Looks like an old town I used to patrol at home. Not even the rain could make it clean.”
“What did your embassy say?” I asked casually.
“About what?” He turned to look out the window.
“About the threat. You’ve told them already, so they could send an alert back, I assume.”
“No, Inspector, I told no one, least of all the embassy. I don’t want anyone to know, not yet.” He rolled down the window and put his hand on top of the car. “I’m the person on the scene. That’s how it’s done.”
“Sure,” I said. “Makes sense.” It didn’t make sense. Unless he had his own communication system, how was he going to get the information back to his capital? Carrier pigeon? The embassy was the only place he had for secure communications, unless he had something in his luggage that was exceptionally well concealed. News like this couldn’t go back over an open phone line. I thought about it. Maybe his security service didn’t trust the embassy people. No reason it should; I’d never heard of a security service anywhere that didn’t consider its foreign ministry personnel as anything but a running wound.
As the road turned north, we drove toward a clump of forsythia bushes, a brilliant explosion of yellow, next to a group of three or four plum trees in blossom. “Now that,” Boswell said, “is what I like to see in the spring, don’t you, Inspector? Some signs of life. Very thoughtful how they plant these things, to give some color this time of year. Wait, it looks like a monument just up that hill. Let’s see what it is. Maybe I can take a picture.”