The Man with the Baltic Stare

by James Church

  “Do you know who I am?” The major sat at arm’s length from the table, making clear to anyone watching that we were not trading secrets. “Why don’t we start there? The rest of the conversation will flow much more easily.”

  An easily flowing conversation was the last thing I wanted with this man. “The girl in the red dress. Unusual accent.”

  The major showed me his teeth. “Very good, Inspector. Most people don’t hear the accent. They’re too captivated by the neckline.”

  “The accent, I can’t quite place it. It’s been nearly trained out of her, but something is still there, a faint echo. Sort of fetching, in its own way.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Smarmy group in the hotel; a few of them are still shy a coat or two of hospitality paint.”

  “Something wrong with the hotel? The room not up to your expectations?” He leaned forward to show me that he cared.

  “The room is fine. Everything is fine. Our meeting earlier this evening in that dark cave was fine. You’ve made a hit with those three house dogs, by the way. Maybe you should throw them a bone every so often, though.”

  The austere smile materialized from around a potted palm, and drinks were placed in front of us.

  “Thank you, Michael,” the major said. “We’ll order in a few minutes.”

  The white coat disappeared into the jungle.

  “Do you always circle around a conversation like this?” The major lifted his glass. “A toast to you, Inspector. Welcome home.”

  “Major what? Major who? Major from where? Is there a new special group operating outside the normal channels?” I clinked glasses. “Normal channels. Normal. You know what’s normal? Dawn, the sun coming up over the next mountain. That’s perfectly normal. But this, I don’t get the feeling this,” I waved my glass in his direction, “is normal.”

  “Off we go, circling again.”

  “OK, no more circles. I’ll lunge. Where are you from?” I took a swallow of my drink.

  “Seoul.”

  I took another swallow. “Do they have menus here, or do we make it up? Incidentally,” I pointed over his shoulder, “whoever installed the wire in that ficus behind you didn’t know what he was doing. It dangles, like a water snake over a pond.” The drink had skipped my stomach and gone to my brain. “I wouldn’t use a wire if I were you. If you use something like that snake in the ficus, it has to be transcribed. Transcribers always fill in what they can’t hear, and they always get it wrong. Hire a note taker. I’ll bet that woman in the red dress is a terrific note taker.”

  Major Kim shook his head. “Don’t worry. We don’t guess. We don’t have to. Our equipment is very, very, very good.”

  Interesting, I thought to myself, he was from the South, and his girlfriend with the soft accent and the neckline was, too. That wasn’t so odd, was it? South Koreans had been coming up north for years. So there were two of them here, so what? My inner voice tried to keep a normal tone, nothing alarmist, but it wasn’t very convincing. Li’s words of warning to me hung like a wreath from the branches of the ficus: You don’t know what you think you know.

  “You’re back in Pyongyang because we need your help, Inspector.” Kim swirled the liquor in his glass. “There is a little problem, and we think you might be able to fix it.”

  4

  Whenever I hear “we” in connection with the word “problem,” especially “little problem,” I start to worry. First my nerves go on alert; then I start to worry.

  “Sorry,” I said, “I’m not in the problem-fixing business anymore. I’m in no business. I follow no professional path. I’m unencumbered, untroubled, and uninterested. To tell you the truth-and you are partial to the truth; I sensed that right away-if the price of dinner is listening to your problem, I can drink a beer in my hotel room. I hope that doesn’t seem rude.” I started to push back my chair. “Anyway, I don’t think I’m authorized to talk to you.” I wasn’t authorized to talk to anyone as far as I was concerned. That’s why I had gone up on the mountain.

  “Please, sit, Inspector. This wasn’t my first choice for an assignment, believe me. I was due for Paris, but this came up, unexpectedly, you might say.” His eyes wandered the room without much interest. “Destiny calls; personnel decisions trump everything. So I found myself here six months ago. That’s a long time to be sitting in meetings with people who hate your guts, don’t you think?”

  “Only six months? Six months is nothing. If it’s so bad, why don’t they send you home? Declare you persona non grata.”

  The major laughed, but it wasn’t particularly pleasant. It was more like the sound of a dead limb coming off a tree on a hillside nearby. For the first time, I noticed he had a classic Korean face, the sharp features that opened the gateway to a thousand different expressions. My grandfather had warned me that people with these faces were real Koreans-the purest of the pure, he called them-and that you couldn’t trust them because you could never figure out what was going through their minds. “The women are the worst,” he’d say. “A woman with that face will be a princess one minute and a bird of prey the next. I don’t like Chinese, but a little Chinese blood mixed in isn’t altogether bad. Your grandmother had Chinese blood. Remember that, boy,” and I’d nod, wondering if any of the girls in the next village were pure-blooded and, if they were, would they ever take the road in front of our house so I could watch as they passed by.

  Kim’s voice battered into my consciousness. “Kick me out? How could they? I countersign all of their orders, and much as I would be tempted, I couldn’t chop off on that one.” He laughed; another limb crashed to the ground.

  “You countersign all of the orders?” I lifted my glass and tilted it toward the major to show him how empty it was.

  “Another drink?”

  “Tell Michael to bring the whole bottle.”

  He pushed the button and Michael materialized.

  “Shall I bring the bottle, sir?”

  “As always, you read my mind, Michael.”

  “Michael, the mind reader,” I said as the white coat vanished. “He also runs your very good recording machines and picks locks, am I right?”

  “No, Inspector, the lock man is the busboy. You had a question about my countersigning orders?”

  I did but decided to skip it for the moment. That was a detail. I didn’t need to know details right now. I needed to know the guts of what this was, this man, this restaurant, the woman with the soft accent, the hotel room stocked with liquor. “Actually, my question was more fundamental. Who are you? After that, I might have a second question.”

  “Which is?”

  “Let’s do them in order. Who are you?”

  “Put it this way: I’m your best friend starting today. Whatever happens, you can rest assured that I’m going to help you. Things may come unglued, but you don’t have to worry, because I am your insurance policy.”

  “Very comforting. Or it would be but for one thing. You still haven’t told me who you are. I don’t mean your name. I don’t mean your title. I mean, who are you? A few gaps in my knowledge I have learned must be accepted. This one, though, I’m not prepared to live with. I could fall into this sort of gap and never be seen again.”

  “Let me give you some background, Inspector.”

  “No background. Let’s avoid background. Let’s try facts. Or don’t you recognize those?”

  He took out a pack of cigarettes and put them on the table. “We are dealing with a situation of considerable delicacy. Facts are not delicate. They can be upsetting, a burden actually. Anyway, as you know, facts are often in dispute. And there is no time left for disputes. May I smoke?”

  “The tune sounds familiar.”

  “Excellent. In that case, you probably know the dance, as well. You did it long enough, all through your life in this country as a matter of fact. All that’s required at this point is a change of partners.” He searched his pockets and found a book of matches. I looked quickly at the cover. The
y were from a hotel I never heard of. The picture looked like a space robot, something Gallic. Maybe it was where he planned to stay in Paris. “Don’t worry.” He put the matches back in his pocket. “You can’t betray what no longer exists.”

  I pushed the chair back the rest of the way and stood up. Any alcohol not already in my brain hurried up to see what the excitement was about. It was a gamble, but I thought I might make it to the door without running into one of the other tables. “I think I have lost my appetite. Pass my compliments to the girl in the red dress.”

  “Your hotel is to the left as you exit, Inspector.” The major tilted his head slightly but remained seated. “It’s a fine walk at night; the sidewalks are well lit. Enjoy the air.”

  Chapter Three

  The bed was comfortable enough, though it had more pillows than anyone could use and the light switch for the lamp on the bedside table wasn’t where it should have been. I thought of looking over the agreement before falling asleep, just to be sure no one had altered it, but decided that would be useless. Everything I’d seen so far that night made clear that it didn’t matter what had been agreed to four, no, five years before. I wandered around the room and looked at the furniture. It was mostly compressed wood-agreeable enough on the outside but nothing really to it. That was getting to be the theme of the day: unreality. I froze. Something was missing-my wood chips. They weren’t on the desk. The desk drawer had a room service menu, a piece of stationery, and a flight schedule. Odd, I thought, and opened the top drawer of the bureau. There were two new shirts in it, both of them my size. The wood chips had been put in a neat pile to one side.

  “Well, what do you know about that?” I said, and lay down. The next thing I knew, the phone woke me.

  “Good morning, Inspector. This is your wake-up call.”

  “Did I ask for one?”

  “Someone must have. It’s early. Take a shower and have some coffee, you’ll feel fine.”

  “Tea. I don’t want coffee. I want tea.”

  “Breakfast is on the second floor. They have plenty of tea. It doesn’t start for two hours, though.”

  “You mean it’s only four thirty?” I gave up looking for the light switch and went to take a shower. This was low-level harassment, and I knew there would be more where that came from. Nothing too rough, but enough to make clear who was in the lead and who was supposed to trot behind. Trot behind for what, I still didn’t know. I’d left the restaurant before finding out what the “small problem” was. Just as I stepped under the water, the phone rang again. Nice, I thought. I got out and picked up the phone. “Go to hell.”

  “Good morning to you, too, Inspector.”

  “What do you want, Major?” I put a towel over the TV screen.

  “Simply wondering if you slept well.”

  I slammed the phone down.

  Twenty minutes later it rang again. “Is this a better time? I thought we could have breakfast together in my office.”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “The driver is waiting out front. See you soon.”

  2

  The office was large and deceptively plain, the sort of plain that comes only with careful thought. Nothing was there by chance, everything had a purpose, and the purpose of the whole was to make it clear that this was a place in which central levers of power were located. Here, the room announced, was not merely the appearance, not simply the trappings, but power in pure form. Pure power didn’t need elaborate decoration. A simple blade cuts clean. All right, I said to myself, we’re making progress-we know the man has power beyond making people nervous.

  Major Kim sat behind a wooden desk so highly polished that I could see his reflection. It was a solid piece of furniture, quite heavy from the looks of it. The message was clear enough. The desk wasn’t going anywhere, and the man behind it was here to stay. The color of the walls was muted, the lighting subdued. The only jarring note I could see was the chairs. They were all different-different colors, different styles. In front of the major’s desk was a brown chair, high backed and without arms. It looked uncomfortable, and my guess was it was supposed to be. Slightly behind the brown chair and off to the side was one with a green velvet seat and a low wooden back. Oddly, it was turned away from the desk, facing a group of folding chairs that sat in a semicircle facing each other. Farthest back, next to the wall that held the room’s only window, was a lonely stack of black plastic chairs.

  The man who had picked me up at the hotel had the air of a duty driver-cheerful, talkative, saying nothing. It was at least an hour before dawn, the streets were deserted, but every streetlight was on. We drove past apartment houses that had not been there the last time I was in Pyongyang, turned into a tunnel I never knew existed, and came out in a compound at the base of a wooded hill. There was a long walkway to a three-story building that had a heavy tank parked on either side. The barrel of the tank on the left followed our progress to the entrance. The driver escorted me past Security, up to the third floor, and all the way to Kim’s door. He knocked twice and then left me alone. More psychology. Did I want to wait until a voice told me to come in? Or did I want to push the door open on my own? I walked in. To hell with psychology.

  Major Kim was pouring a cup of tea. “Ah, good morning to you, Inspector. I see you’re wearing a new shirt. It fits, I hope.” He looked at me carefully. “Yes, it does. The neck size is good? Sit, why don’t you?” He pointed to the brown chair. If I could see his reflection in the desk, he could see mine. He didn’t need to look up to know how I was reacting. “Here I have tea. We can enjoy some fish, a wonderful bowl of soup, and whatever else you might like.” He pressed a button under the desk.

  “Is Michael on duty?” I glanced around the room. “Or will we have one of the morning crew? Paul, perhaps?”

  A door off to the side opened and a middle-aged man in a suit and tie walked in. He eyed me briefly before turning his attention to Major Kim. “It’s not going to get any better if we continue to wait. You know that already, I assume.”

  Kim took the top off the teapot and looked inside. “We have a meeting at nine o’clock.” He put the top back in place. “That’s why we call it a nine o’clock meeting.”

  The man grimaced. “Your decision, of course.” He started out the door and nearly knocked over an aide carrying a tray.

  “Paul.” I waved him in. “Good to see you. Put the things down and get out your notebook. Tomorrow, no four A.M. wake-up call, understood? Not four thirty, either. Let’s say nothing earlier than five o’clock. Go ahead, write it down; the major doesn’t object.”

  Major Kim sniffed one of the dishes and handed it to the aide. “I don’t want this served ever again. Am I clear?” The aide nodded. “Good. And take note of the Inspector’s instructions about the wake-up call. If that’s what he wants, that’s what he gets.” The aide nodded again. “Dismissed,” said the major.

  “Well,” said the major, after the aide had closed the door, “nothing here is easy. But then, there’s no reason to expect it should be. That’s part of the challenge. In case you’re wondering, the man in the suit is one of mine. The aide is one of yours.”

  Mine. Yours. Marking territory, like a dog walking along the street. “A division of labor,” I said. “Very smart. Would you like me to haul a few buckets of water?” I looked around the room. “At the very least, let me arrange your chairs for the nine o’clock staff meeting.”

  “Jumping to conclusions, aren’t we, Inspector?”

  “You tell me.”

  The major laid the dishes out on the desk. “Eat first, business later. I’m always hungry in the morning. You?”

  “At my age, appetite is no longer central to existence. I don’t give it much thought anymore.”

  “A weary thing to say, Inspector. You aren’t going to be glum all day long, I hope. We have a lot to accomplish, and we might as well be cheerful about it. If I weren’t careful, I could be depressed all the time, but what’s the use of that?”
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  “A new day dawns. The world is fresh, and yet we confront the same question as we did last night: What is this about?”

  “Have some soup.”

  “I don’t want soup. I want to know what this is about, because if I don’t find out damn soon, I’m leaving.” I didn’t think Kim would be fazed. He wasn’t.

  “Leaving. Again. I would have told you last night, but you left in a hurry. Don’t press your luck, Inspector. I’d hoped to give you a lot of space to get used to things, but that’s not going to be possible.”

  “I see.”

  “No, I doubt that you do.” There was the tiniest flash of steel in his voice. “The fact is, from here on out, you are under my direct command. You take orders from me; you report to me; you jump when I tell you to jump.”

  Really? What led him to believe such a thing? I’d just spent five years on a mountaintop not following anyone’s orders. I was going back in harness at the snap of his fingers? Not likely. “Yesterday, you were my insurance policy, my best pal. Now you are suggesting I am a draft animal. Something happen overnight?”

  The major smiled obliquely; I checked off one of his thousand expressions. “I’m still your pal; don’t misunderstand. But I’ll crack your skull open and cook your brains for breakfast if you give me trouble. Is that clear?”

  “Finally, we’re getting somewhere. Let me put two and two together. You’re from the South, as you told me last night. You seem to be under the impression that you are my superior. Streetlights are on everywhere. And the room maid addresses me as ‘sir.’ Shall I take a guess at what has happened? Or what might happen?”

  “No. You won’t be doing any guessing, Inspector. There’s no margin here for that. I move according to stone-cold facts. And that’s what you will do from now on, too.” He shrugged. “Confused? I suggested to you last night that facts are inconvenient, but so is reality. Facts may be a problem, but reality is a killer. There’s no way around reality, in my experience. Admittedly, you seem to have spent a lifetime avoiding it.”