by James Church
“The Japanese have also been here before,” I said, “but that doesn’t mean we want them back.”
“Surely, Inspector, you aren’t comparing us to them.”
“I know General Su was a great military leader.” I bid farewell to my knees. It was hopeless. I would have to be wheeled around from now on. “I also seem to recall—and you or the major will correct me if I am mistaken—that he went home in defeat, having failed to take Pyongyang.” I picked up my cup. It was very delicate. If I crushed it between my fingers, I would not be doing history any favors.
Pang sipped his tea. “All the better for Major Su to return and remedy that.” He smiled. “You could be valuable to your people, Inspector. If you’d rather work with your brothers in the South, of course I understand. But I can tell you that there is no way that they will reclaim this entire peninsula. And anyway, do you think there is any chance that they will integrate you into their fat and happy world? That would set their economy back decades, depress their living standards, lower wages, siphon off capital, create a burden to support twenty-four million needy people—and your people are needy, Inspector. You cannot dispute that.” He waited to see if I would respond.
I put the teacup down gently. “I can dispute anything,” I said. “The question is, what good will it do?”
“Let me be blunt. We know that some of your southern brothers plan to set up a gangster state on your territory. They need it to make money, to hide money, to move money. Other people think such a state will be useful because it can become an ideal platform for operations of all sorts against my country. There used to be such places elsewhere—Macau, for example. But we’ve been shutting down Macau, inch by inch. It is very slow going. Ridding even that tiny island of corruption is not like washing your face. It’s not simply dirt; it has become organic. The job might take several more years to finish, maybe even a decade. Meanwhile, it has already become uncomfortable enough that the big people, important people, are looking elsewhere. People like Zhao. People who give Major Kim his orders. And where do maggots go? To a rotting corpse.”
“Should I start composing poetry now, or should we wait a few more minutes?”
Pang’s expression hardened. “We won’t let that take place on our border. We will never let events come to that. I told you not to go to Macau, but now I’ve changed my mind. Go; look around. It’s better if you get some sense of what happens when corruption takes root. I don’t mean the petty bribery that goes on everywhere; I mean the full-blown version that turns men rancid. If it doesn’t sicken you, if you don’t come back here and tell me that you will work with us, I will be surprised.”
“And you do not like to be surprised.”
“It’s not that I don’t like it. It’s that I’m careful to make sure surprise doesn’t touch my existence, in any way.” His mood visibly improved. “Why don’t I put on some music for us?”
“Chinese opera, perhaps?” I was not looking forward to that, but it seemed all too likely in the presence of General Su and his cups.
“Do you like Chinese opera, Inspector? I can’t stand it. The spectacle is tolerable; at least the costumes are a distraction from the noise. But a recording? I wouldn’t even want to saw boards to it.” He must have realized his mistake immediately, because he reached in his pocket and pulled out a small, paper-thin piece of wood.
“I understand you are much attracted to trees. This is a piece of white birch, from a forest near Harbin. Mean anything to you?”
“As your research has obviously discovered, my father was born in Harbin.” Pang had done his homework. This was his way of telling me that he could step into my life and rearrange it any time he wanted. He didn’t care if I despised him for it, as long as I understood.
Major Su walked over and took away the teacups. Pang waited until she had disappeared inside the white building. “If you look carefully, you’ll see that on the piece of wood is a phone number. The digits are quite small and rather faint, but you should have no trouble making them out. If you see or hear anything in Macau that has a bearing on the fate of your country, call me. Tell the person who answers that you owe me money. They will put you through to me immediately, any time night or day.”
PART II
Chapter One
Major Kim had told me to make sure that the evidence in Macau pointed “elsewhere.” When I asked what the evidence was, he told me that was for me to find out. When I asked how bad it was, he said very simply, “Bad.”
“There wasn’t time to set up your trip through the normal contacts,” he said just before I left for the airport. “You may run into interference here and there. I’ll keep doing what I can to smooth things out from this end, but mostly you are on your own.”
“Do I have a number to call in case of a real emergency?”
“No.” Kim spread his hands. “Nothing. It’s not that sort of assignment. You’ll have to deal with things as they come up.”
“Do you know me if something goes wrong?”
“What do you think?”
“About the passport.”
“What about the passport?”
“I need something else.”
“You may as well get used to carrying ROK documents, Inspector. Besides, on such short notice, even if I wanted to, I couldn’t come up with anything else. Don’t worry; you won’t die simply from handling it.”
I wasn’t worried about a dread illness. I was worried about the entry stamps—they didn’t look right. If they don’t look right, even for a moment, they get a second glance from Immigration. And if they got a second glance, it usually meant having to answer a lot of questions in a hot room. I had that happen in Copenhagen once, and I didn’t plan to go through it again. Some Danes are very persistent. I could see Kim wasn’t going to budge, though, so I moved on. People can be stubborn about passports, even phony ones. “What about emergency funds?”
“You have all you’ll need.”
“There’s not very much in this little envelope.”
“There never is. I don’t have more to spare. Be thankful you have an airline ticket and a hotel reservation. If you pay anything out of pocket, you’ll be reimbursed, though it takes forever.”
“How about advice? That’s free.”
“Stay away from your own people in Macau. They’re all over the place, and they won’t know you’re there. At least, they’re not supposed to know. Don’t wink or nod or give a secret handshake to anyone. Stay out of Korean restaurants. I don’t know who stands where on what issue, and we don’t want to find out the hard way.”
“You mean they don’t know what’s going on here?”
Kim shrugged. “Hell, Inspector, I don’t even know most of the time.”
We laughed. Neither of us thought it was funny.
2
My plane landed in Hong Kong around five o’clock on a muggy afternoon. I waited around in the airport for a couple of hours until the ferry left for Macau. We pulled up to the dock around eight at night; it was so humid that the raindrops were sweating. The immigration officer was bored, but not so bored that he didn’t look at every page in my passport. Then he did it again, this time flicking each page with a sharp click, letting me know he wasn’t fooled one little bit by all the travel that never happened. Finally, he stamped it wearily, unwilling to make an issue of what he knew could not be easily dismissed. He handed it back, never looking at me, as one might not look at a bag of garbage dropped at the front door.
When I gave the cabdriver the piece of paper with the hotel’s address, he studied it for a long time. “OK,” he said finally. He shouted into his phone, and I heard laughter from the other end. We drove down a wide street lined with casinos, neon signs dancing and shouting and making a mess of the night. Finally, we turned onto a quiet street, went another block, and then turned again. The hotel was a hole-in-the-wall between two dark buildings that looked abandoned. There was lettering over the entrance, “Hotel Nam Lo,” and a piece of poster
board just inside the door with pictures of the rooms. They looked bleak. The front desk was up a flight of stairs that led to a lobby big enough for a person to turn around and go back downstairs to find another place. Kim had said I should be grateful that I had a hotel. He had never met the desk clerk. The clerk looked up and shouted at me in Cantonese. Years ago I learned that having to cope with too many tones in a language makes a person angry. Who wants to go through all that effort to say something that someone else can coast through in a monotone? I let him vent.
“Three nights!” he said at last, in Mandarin. Having to deal in only four tones seemed to calm him down. “You must really think you’re something. For everyone else, the rooms are for a shorter time. A couple of hours, but not you! Must be some pills you got.”
“Is there a problem with three days?”
“No problem, as long as you aren’t doing something weird. I don’t want police around.”
“OK by me.”
“Absolutely nothing with animals.”
“Nothing with hooves.”
He put on his glasses and gave me a hard look. “Pay in advance. Extra day for damages.”
“Over my dead body.”
“Might be. That’s why you pay in advance.”
The room was up another flight of stairs. It was exactly like the picture, small and grim. I edged in. There was space enough for a ratty chair and one lamp with a minibulb. The television didn’t work; the phone made gurgling sounds when I accidentally knocked it off the hook.
Thumping noises came through the wall from the room next to mine, but nothing that sounded like an emergency. I wasn’t tired; it wasn’t that late yet. I knew I’d strangle myself if I stayed in the room for another minute, so I went for a walk. One block to the right of the hotel were buildings with pulsating signs; the block to the left was deserted, empty, almost completely dead. A couple of jewelry shops were open, but the clerks were dozing with their heads on the counters.
Climbing the stairs back to my room, I passed a young girl coming down—short skirt, white mesh stockings. She had green eyes; even in the dim light of the stairwell you couldn’t have missed those eyes.
“Watch yourself,” I said in Russian. “It’s dark outside.”
“You speak Russian.” She paused on the step below mine and looked back up at me with her green eyes. She wasn’t more than twenty.
“I speak Russian,” I said. “Go home; go back to your family.”
“In five months,” she said. “Good night.”
It was simple, I thought as the stairway swallowed her. When you’re young, five months can solve everything.
3
The next day, as soon as I found the right person, I would be able to see what was bothering Kim. The problem was finding the right person. It was already warm by eight in the morning, with the promise of humidity breathing down my neck. Even so, the sky sparkled; the streets were noisy with buses and taxis and motorbikes. It felt like a different town from what I’d seen last night. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad after all.
Everybody I asked was polite, but no, it was not possible for them to interact with me on an official basis without express approval of the proper authority. And who would that be? It was impossible to reveal without the authorization of that excellent person. At last, I was told that if I went to the post office in Senado Square and asked at window five, there would be a message waiting. The square was not far away; the clerk at window five produced the message as if passing messages were her main job. I was to call a certain phone number before noon. It was nearly 11:55, and there wasn’t a phone in the post office—a machine selling all manner of phone cards, yes, but an actual telephone? The clerk shrugged. I spotted four phones in the office behind her. No, she said, and closed her window, it was not possible for an unofficial person to use one of those official phones. Perhaps, I said, the clerk would be kind enough to point me in the general direction of a pay phone? She recited the directions: “Outside, turn right, go up the square—though it isn’t really a square,” she said, “more like a cardboard box that has collapsed at one end—past St. Dominic’s, which is yellow and not easy to miss, bear right, turn left at the ice-cream shop, and there, about twenty-five meters on the right, will be two phones. Only one of them works, unless, as sometimes happens, neither does.” She gave me a faraway smile. “One never knows.”
I trotted on the path she indicated and found what she promised. The phone on the left had a dial tone. I threw in all manner of coins and was connected to a male voice. It was 11:59.
“Ah, Inspector, I’ve been wondering if you had decided to go home.”
“The idea occurred to me.” I had no idea who I was talking to, which put me at a disadvantage, because the person on the other end seemed to know me. “We might have saved time if you had left this number at my hotel.”
“But we did; we did! The old man at the front desk didn’t give it to you?”
“He did not.”
“In that case, where did you get the number?”
“At the post office.”
“Indeed!”
“Perhaps we should meet, assuming you are the excellent person who can help me.”
“God helps those who help themselves, Inspector.” It was possible that Kim had told this man to expect me. Or Pang. Or even Zhao. The passport didn’t list my title, and for purposes of this trip I was a diamond salesman, which I had put down on the immigration card. “But I do what I can. It might be wise if we continued our conversation in my office.”
“And where would that be?”
“The location is not well known.”
“Perhaps you could tell me—quickly. I think I’m running out of coins.”
“You are where?”
“Past St. Dominic’s, and a few steps beyond the ice cream.”
“There are two phones? The one on the right does not work?”
“Correct.”
“Then we are very near to each other!”
“God’s will,” I said, only because I had a feeling it might get me somewhere.
“Unlikely. No, in this case I suspect it was the Ministry of State Security man who parks his van near the Lisboa at night to keep an eye on the Russian prostitutes and their clients. You talked to him?”
“I don’t know who I talked to. The van was a trash heap.”
“Yes, he loves pork buns. Buys them by the bagful.”
“So, MSS is part of this?”
Laughter. “My goodness, how could they not be? Very well, you’re within a few meters of a sign with an arrow pointing toward the ruins of St. Paul’s. Head in that direction for another twenty meters. On your left will be a small shop, dark, and very crowded with machinery and tools and wood.”
“Wood?”
“The sign painted over the doorway will say: ‘Carpenteria.’ It is a place where they make fine furniture and intricate wooden screens. As you’ll see, it is really quite beautiful. My office is in the back. I’ll let them know to expect you. They close at noon, so hurry.”
4
There were no introductions. The man behind the desk pointed to a chair, checked his watch, and began to summarize from a folder that he held casually in one hand:
“A young man, very rich, with the violent temper that came from too much pressure and too much restraint, had taken a very pretty, very elegant, very expensive prostitute into his room. They’d ordered dinner, watched a movie, and then started to argue. She threw things. He strangled her. In a panic, he cut her up in the marble bathroom and put her in a four-wheeled suitcase. Then he took a shower, went to breakfast—coffee, no cream, one sugar—read the paper, told the Assistant Manager he needed a limo to the airport, settled the bill in Hong Kong dollars, and all at once changed his mind. He didn’t want to go to the airport, he said. No, he needed a rental car, something with a big trunk, so he could drive around and see the sights before he left. He produced a map—which way was the harbor?” The man looked up to as
sure himself I was listening closely.
“About breakfast, no rice congee?”
“No, why should he have rice congee for breakfast?”
“Just wondering.” Major Kim’s story suddenly had holes.
The man studied me a moment and then continued, “Security has tapes from the surveillance cameras. A girl had gone into his room. She did not rappel down the side of the building from the thirty-fourth floor. A helicopter did not pluck her from the balcony; indeed, the room had no balcony, even though that was what the young man had requested. The girl never left, it was concluded by all who watched the tapes, not unless you counted the drops of blood on the carpet down the hallway to the elevator.” The folder was closed and put on the desk. “His fingerprints are on the knife.” The room was growing hot. A fan started up and blew the hot air into a corner. It also blew the folder off the desk. The man smiled. He was cool and collected, a nice-looking, gray-haired policeman, rather thin, with long-fingered hands that he used to emphasize various points he seemed to think I might otherwise miss. He wasn’t what anyone would call rugged, and he had about him what can only be called an indescribable air. He didn’t look Chinese to me; I would have said he was Portuguese.
“I don’t know why rich people do it,” he said, and his long fingers sliced the air, “but they often chop each other to pieces, like a plate of Portuguese chicken.”
I decided this was my opportunity to throw in a few questions, not only to get some answers but also to test his technique. “Rich. Do we know that?”
“Very few street people take suites at five-star hotels.” He smiled. “How did I do, Inspector? Passing grade?”
“So, you have a suspect, a rich male. You’re not saying, but I assume he’s Asian.” There was no sense specifying where in Asia I meant if for some reason they didn’t already have that. “If he was a Westerner, you wouldn’t even be talking to me. And where is he now?”