Chapter Four
The four-car caravan turned off the paved road onto a dirt track. The first car, a Mercedes with bad springs, carried the British visitor with his Foreign Ministry escort. In the next car, a fairly new Toyota with a right-hand drive, sat the two aides, an older woman who brayed when she laughed and a young man with a haunted expression and a long nose. The third car was mine. Boswell sat in angry silence beside me. He kept curling his right hand into a fist. Yang was in the backseat, staring out the window. The final car, a van, had the luggage and two extra MPS guards.
We came to a stop. Boswell brought his fist down on the dashboard. “This is the craziest security I’ve ever seen. The craziest. The target is in the lead car, unprotected. Are you trying to get him killed?”
“Your visitor was briefed about the plot this morning. He said he didn’t believe it. His aides yawned; the woman said it looked like an effort to discredit him. We can’t tell him to go home; the Foreign Ministry says it would cause an incident. So just in case, we’ve redoubled the guard at every site he’s to visit. Anyway, who says he is unprotected? For all you know, the lead car has bulletproof glass. Just relax.”
“Mary and Joseph in a stewpot, how can I relax?”
“We got past your buildings with the shadows, didn’t we?”
“Where next?”
“I don’t know.”
Boswell snorted. “Don’t be ridiculous. There are only so many places this dirt road can go. Don’t tell me you don’t know where that is.”
The caravan started again, the lead car speeding ahead. Yang leaned forward. “There’s a secure guesthouse up in the hills, about a fifteen-minute drive from here.”
Boswell turned around and stared, as if information coming from the rear seat was unwelcome. “You mean he’s not going to stay at the Koryo?”
“Would seem that way.” Yang sat back in his seat again and looked out the window, ending the conversation. From his tone of voice, you’d think he was bored, but looking in the rearview mirror, I didn’t think he was.
We hit a bump; Boswell bounced and hit his head against the roof. “Christ, every time we go anywhere that happens. Can’t you people build roads? I thought this led to a VIP guesthouse.”
“Who said it was for VIPs? All Yang said was it’s secure, well protected.”
“You can’t bring a visitor someplace in the middle of nowhere, out of the blue.” Boswell’s Korean was starting to deteriorate. “You can’t just dump a foreign official wherever you choose. No one does that. I haven’t checked out this place.”
The dirt road became paved again; we roared past one guard post, then another. Abruptly, the road became barely one lane. It climbed a steep hill in a series of switchbacks; there were no guardrails, not even any rocks painted white along the side, which dropped down a few hundred meters. “Slow down a bit.” Boswell spoke carefully, not to jar my concentration.
“Relax, would you? I’ve driven roads like this much faster, at night, in the fog.” I took my eyes off the road for a moment and looked at Boswell; he was gripping the dashboard. “You’ll like it. We never build guesthouses where there are shadows.”
Yang coughed. “Mind if I open my window?”
We went around another sharp bend, then the road became straight and broad. It passed through an open gate with sentries on either side. They weren’t slouching. At the end of a long drive was a one-story building, surrounded on three sides by a high concrete fence, with broken glass cemented along the top, and barbed wire on top of that.
The first two cars were already parked and the visitor was walking with the driver and the Foreign Ministry escort to the front door when gunfire broke out. The driver dropped the two suitcases he was carrying and hit the ground, fumbling for the holster under his coat. Three more shots; one kicked up dust near the lead car’s front tire, the other two shattered its windows on the driver’s side. I braked and steered off the road onto the dirt. The Foreign Ministry official dropped to the ground and covered his head with his arms. Boswell cursed and fumbled with his door handle. He half fell out and scrambled toward the house. “Get fucking down, you idiots,” he bellowed and looked wildly around to pinpoint the source of the shots.
The two aides started to get out of their car, but Boswell ran over and shoved them back inside. “Stay there, stay there, don’t move, don’t move a muscle.” He crouched behind the second car, took a deep breath, then ran toward the house.
I turned to tell Yang to follow him while I circled around the back. He had a pistol in his hand. “What the hell is that?” It was the first thing that came to my mind, though I already knew the answer. It was a Russian Makarov.
Yang stopped, clicked off the safety, then looked at me. “Stay out of the way, O. Please.” Another shot rang out, just as Boswell reached the visitor and pushed him onto the ground. I had no time to think. I threw myself at Yang, caught him on the shoulder, and we both fell off balance. His gun hand swung around and hit me on the side of the head. If I hadn’t been so much off balance, maybe I could have kicked him in the chest. Instead, I fell down.
Two men stood over me. Jurgen and Dieter, or maybe the other way around. One of them said, “Oh, shit,” in German and loaded a shell into a hunting rifle he held easily, the way some people hold a familiar book. He had a pen in his breast pocket. Yang put a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t bother,” he said. I didn’t know the man could speak German; first the waitresses at the guesthouse, then Yang. Maybe he taught himself during all those night shifts. He switched to Korean. “I’ll take care of him,” he said, pointing at me. “Get the others and finish the job here.”
The German with the rifle looked disappointed but nodded. “We’ll see you later,” he said curtly, in Korean that was better than Boswell’s.
As I stood up, two men with their shirttails flapping hurried across the road toward the back of the guesthouse. Two others emerged from the luggage van and strolled into the woods without looking in my direction.
I turned to Yang. “Go on, get it over with.”
“Nothing left to do, O. I’ve finished my part.”
“You can’t get very far, you realize that. They know all about it now.”
“So what?”
“I’m disappointed.”
“Don’t be, O.” There was an exchange of shots and then a shrill scream. Yang stiffened. “That’s it, then. Time to go.” He nodded to me and jogged off into the woods.
The two guards from the entry gate and another enlisted man came running up, waving their arms. “We heard shots and then saw people running.” The first one pointed his pistol at the trees. “What is going on? We’ve radioed in an alert, but they said they need more details.”
“Who told you to leave your post? One of you has to get back to the radio.” They stared at each other dumbly. “Never mind, come with me. Just don’t shoot at anything unless I tell you to.” We edged up toward the guesthouse. The front door was open. When I eased myself inside, the two aides were crouched, white-faced and panting with fear, in the corner. Boswell was standing over the visitor, who was bleeding slightly from the upper arm. “He’s been shot,” Boswell said and turned away.
“Where’s the driver? I’ll tell him to get help.” I looked around.
“Don’t bother, he’s dead.”
The visitor raised his head and said tonelessly, “My arm.”
Boswell motioned to me to walk outside with him. “Flesh wound. He’ll be fine.”
One of the aides, the woman, stood up. “We’ve got to get out of here. They may come back.”
“You stick to arranging tea parties, I’ll do security. No one is coming back. Sit down and don’t say anything.” Boswell didn’t even try to hide his contempt.
I shouted at the guards to watch over the visitor, then followed Boswell out the door.
Boswell took in the scene in front of the guesthouse, then asked neutrally, “Where’s your friend Yang?”
“With the others, I suppose.”
“You suppose. Inspector, the man is rotten to the core.”
“Maybe.” I was thinking how he had stopped one of the Germans from blowing my head off.
“Can you call in and get help, or do you have to drive all the way back down to find a phone?”
“My phone is in the car. Who knows if it will work up here in the hills. The gate guards already issued an alert, but I doubt their communications unit will pass the word to someone who can do us any good. Maybe the lead car has a radio in it.” The radio, under the seat, was so new that I knew the car wasn’t one of the Ministry’s. Probably SSD. That explained why I didn’t recognize the dead driver. I didn’t know any of the call signs or even who I was going to be talking to on the other end when a voice came up. “Identify yourself.” There was a series of clicks.
“This is Inspector O, Ministry of People’s Security.”
“What the hell are you doing on this communications net?”
“Forget that. I need you to pass a message direct to MPS headquarters.”
“Passing MPS messages is not my job. You have your own communications.”
“Listen to me, you idiot. I’m on the security team for a British VIP who arrived yesterday. We’re at Koko Two. Do you know where that is? There’s been a shooting. One dead. One wounded.”
“A shooting? Who is this?”
“I told you who it was. We need emergency medical help. We also need a big squad of reinforcements. Is this a State Security radio?”
“None of your business. I still don’t know for sure who you are. Put on Lieutenant An.”
I looked at the dead driver. “Does An have a mole on his lip?”
“Yeah. Put him on.”
“He can’t talk right now.”
“Don’t screw with me. Let me talk to An.”
“Not easy to do. He’s dead.”
There was a crackle as the voice on the other end breathed into the microphone. “You killed An?”
“I’m telling you one more time. We need medical assistance and heavy reinforcements fast. Cordon off the Martyrs’ Cemetery, that’s where they’re headed. You better move fast. I think the Capital Command may already have been notified. If they have, they’ll lock down the city and you’ll never get anyone up here.”
A new voice came on. “O, is that you?”
“Han?”
“Where are you?”
“Koko Two. There’s been an assassination attempt here, the British VIP is wounded, and your Lieutenant An is dead.”
“How about your boy, Yang? Seen him around?”
I ignored him. “There are at least six of them. The two Germans are part of it.”
“Hang on a second.” He shouted at someone, then came back on. “Alright. There are sketchy reports of gunfire at the cemetery just coming in, I don’t know from where. We already have people on the way to that temple up in the hills. Reports say there might be weapons there.”
“There were. They’re gone.”
“Well.” He paused. “What about the old man?”
“There’s a group of assassins loose and you’re worried about an old blind man? He’s blind, Han. He’s pathetic.”
“Politics and blindness, Inspector.” Han’s voice was fading in and out. “I’m not qualified to judge. Wait, hang on again.” There was more shouting, then Han came back on the radio. “Listen, the army has sent out patrols in your direction. I’ll bet the soldiers are nervous as hell. Don’t look at them cross-eyed, that’s my advice. They’re not supposed to go into the cemetery, though, just cordon it off. So get over there as quick as you can.”
“What about the situation here at the VIP quarters?”
“What about it? Have someone close it off. Where are the other guards?”
“I think the term is ‘melted away.’ The gate sentries seem loyal.”
“They better be. Leave them there. A truck with one of our squads should get there in about twenty minutes, if they can make it up that hill. You better get moving. You’re closest to the cemetery. Get there.”
“Front gate or back?”
“Show some initiative, Inspector. It’s your call.”
“What about Boswell?” The radio clicked and went silent.
2
By the time we got to the cemetery, there were already three SSD cars scattered on the grass and another car, with plates I didn’t recognize, parked neatly behind a fence. A conference was going on under a tall, straight plane tree down the slope, next to the path that led toward busts of revolutionary martyrs. When Boswell and I ran over, the man in the brown suit was just folding a piece of paper into his coat pocket.
“We don’t need either of you here, Inspector. You’ve caused enough trouble already.”
Boswell broke in. “This was an assassination attempt against an official of Her Majesty’s Government. A guest of yours, I might add. I’m not leaving until those involved are in custody and we can question them. That’s firm, and that’s final.”
The man in the brown suit turned to Boswell and smiled patiently. There was nothing friendly in his face, however. Simply patience, the sort of patience that a skilled interrogator has in abundance, a bottomless pit of patience. “Her Majesty’s Government has no authority, no writ, no nothing for as far as the eye can see, Mr. Boswell. Certainly not this side of Suez. You have even less standing, I would add.” In a dark room, he would have paused to let the point sink in. “Go back to your hotel and stay there; do not stick your nose outside of your room. A car will come by to pick you up the morning of the flight. You don’t want to miss that airplane, Mr. Boswell, believe me.”
“I’ll do no such thing.”
The man in the brown suit shrugged. As he turned to one of the SSD officers, a shot rang out. All of us flattened ourselves on the grass, except for the man in the brown suit. He looked around calmly. “It came from over there”—he pointed to a slight hill to our left—“but it wasn’t aimed our way.” The sound of a machine pistol interrupted; two of the busts of martyrs fell to the ground fifteen meters away and rolled across the path into an azalea bush. “Whereas,” said the man in the brown suit, “that was more or less in our neighborhood.” He sat down heavily and stretched out his bad leg. “Splendid, they want to make a stand here.” He took out a cigarette, put it to his lips, and let it dangle there. “Dumb bastards.”
Boswell pulled his ample chin off the ground. “I need a weapon. Give me a revolver, anything.”
“You need to get back to your hotel, Superintendent.” The man in the brown suit was brushing the twigs off his jacket. “This isn’t your fight. This isn’t even your country. Stay the hell out of it.” The SSD officers had drawn their service pistols and were hunched behind a stone marker. “You,” the man in brown called to them, “don’t sit around like goats. Spread out and get us some idea where those shots came from.” He looked over at me. “Inspector, circle around back and see if you can figure out how many there are.”
“There are six.”
“Oh, really? And what are they wearing?”
“Blue trousers and tan shirts. Two of them have their shirttails flapping; those are the Kazakhs, I’d say. Two others were posing as MSS guards, looked like Koreans but I don’t know. Their shirts are creased on the back, like they’re brand-new. Good shoes, very smart dressers for assassins.”
“The last two?”
Boswell broke in. “Those are the Germans. They’re as slippery as you’ll ever find. They’ll get away if you don’t close every exit, and I mean every possible exit.” He reached over and lit the dangling cigarette.
Another machine pistol burst, and three more martyrs’ busts rolled down the hill. The man in the brown suit sighed. “Arrogant bastard.” It was not clear whether he meant Boswell or the shooter. “Not very far away, maybe two hundred meters,” he said. “Okay, Superintendent, I’m giving you a weapon, and if you move one whisker off course, I’ll have you shot, is that clear? The inspector will put three bullets in your back.” He took a puff on the cigarette and exhaled carefully, not like a man in a national cemetery where a gun-fight would get him nothing but a bad report in his file, no matter how it ended. “Stay close behind him, Inspector.”
A single shot and the lead SSD officer fell to the ground. He didn’t move. The other two sniffed at him like dogs who had found the moldy carcass of a cat. They looked back at us, fear on their faces. The man in the brown suit pointed at the body. “Leave him there. Get on with it before they pick us all off one by one.” He scanned the terrain. “That was not a handgun, not a machine pistol. One of them has a rifle and knows how to shoot. A hunter, maybe. Well, we’ll see about that.” Another single shot, a sharp crack, then a burst from the machine pistol that shredded the leaves on the tree and brought down a shower of twigs.
Boswell and I crawled off toward a little cover. “You go first, Superintendent, I’ll watch.”
He looked at me without expression. “You won’t shoot me in the back?”
“Let’s have this conversation another time.” I gestured toward a statue that sat at the base of a small rise about twenty-five meters away. “Get to that and plop down. I’ll be close behind.” Without another word, he rolled over twice to the left, got onto his knees and looked around quickly, then sprinted to the statue. A shot rang out, and he fell forward just as he made it. I cursed, fired twice, then ran like hell.
Boswell was moaning when I flung myself behind the statue. “I’m not hit, but I think I broke my leg when I fell. I hate this fucking country, do you know that, Inspector?”
“You mentioned it once before.”
“No, really, I hate it, this fucking country.”
“Anything else?”
“My leg, I can’t walk. What should we do?”
“It’s your leg.”
“I need a doctor.”
“That could take days.”
“Days? Why, in God’s name?”
“Getting a visa, flying from England, that sort of thing.”
“England? England? You have doctors here, surely.”
“In this fucking country, you mean? We couldn’t have you submit to our backwardness. It wouldn’t do.”
“Don’t be getting droll on me, Inspector, not at a time like this. Call someone. You do have a phone on you?”
“I don’t.” That was true. The phone was still in the car. “Tell me, Boswell, what would the British Empire have done? In the old days, I mean. Gloriously wounded on the field of battle, the superintendent looks around for his subaltern, that is the word, isn’t it? Out in the field, surrounded by wogs, that’s what you called them. All those wogs, and one of your sturdy Scots legs, broken.”
By now I could see Boswell was in pain. “I can’t go back to the car just yet,” I said. “There are still too many people roaming around with guns. You seem to be a target, why I can’t imagine. Must be your size.” Boswell looked like he might snarl but then uncurled his lip and turned his face away. I wasn’t in a charitable mood at the moment. “Personally, I think there are more people out here than we imagine, and none of them are sure who they can trust. What about you, Superintendent, who do you trust?”
When Boswell turned back to me, he was sweating with pain. He moaned softly, took a breath, and turned pale. “I think I might be bleeding internally. Maybe the bone punctured an artery.” He moaned again. “Did I tell you I hate this fucking country?”
“Yes.”
“I do.”
“I get your point.” I crawled closer beside him and took his pulse. “It’s racing, but it’s plenty strong.”
“All of a sudden, you’re a doctor?”
“As long as we have nothing else to do, why don’t you tell me what you know about all of this? Your visiting official, what’s his name? I have a feeling you don’t care that he was shot. In fact, I think you actually wanted him killed.”
Boswell grimaced. It might have been a smile in other circumstances, though not a nice one. “Why would you say that?”
“You didn’t want to cancel the visit.”
“He’s a bad man, Inspector, a very evil man. Immoral to the core of his soul.” Boswell’s face was getting gray; his skin looked clammy. “It actually wasn’t in the planning, but at least if he was killed here, his death would accomplish something good.”
“You already know what his death will trigger. You told me yourself.”
“No, it won’t happen here. Not on my watch. Not in my territory.”
“It almost did, and that might have been enough. This isn’t about you, Inspector, it’s about something bigger. The future of your country. Your people’s future.”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about, do you? You’re just reciting some crap they handed you at a briefing. My country’s future? Forgive me, Superintendent, I don’t know anything that flourishes when it’s watered with blood. Let’s not float away on visions of the future. Your man, whoever he is and whatever he’s done, is not my problem. Am I clear? If you have a bone to pick with him, take care of it yourself, on your own turf. What happens here is not yours to worry about. It’s for us, it’s our business, our future, our fate.”
“Surely you don’t believe that.”
“Don’t tell me what I believe. I live here, you don’t.”
“Thank God.”
“Let me guess, Superintendent, this whole thing involves a sort of Western calculus, moral weights and measures. The sacrifice of one evil man is worthwhile if it is for the greater good, is that it?”
“You don’t know this man, Inspector. He is disgusting. Everything he touches takes on a stench.”
“Oh, bravo! I congratulate you on being so sensitive. You have the ability to separate the moral wheat from the immoral chaff. Who in your system makes this decision? Who decides how to add it all up? One evil man, led to his death, set up to be murdered in order to trigger the deaths of others—how many we cannot guess—in the expectation that it will lead to something good. Someday. Maybe.”
“No one decided to have him killed, Inspector. If it were up to me, I’d say it was immaterial whether he died or not, what we call collateral damage. If he happened to step in front of a bullet—some of us thought that would be a bonus, but it wasn’t crucial. All he got was a flesh wound anyway. It might be enough.” Boswell stared at his leg. “That bastard only gets a flesh wound, and I break my fucking leg in the middle of a fucking cemetery.” He closed his eyes. “I may be out of options, Inspector, but so are you. This operation is already under way. You don’t dare try to stop it. You don’t have any idea who your friends are.”
“Friends?” I laughed at the thought. “Under the circumstances, I think I still have one or two, and that’s a hell of a lot more than you can be sure of. In fact, I’m the only friend you have in this place, at this moment, and I have orders to shoot you if the need arises. Look around. Believe me, you are completely naked, not to mention lame. Do you think you’re going to hang around here for a few weeks while your leg heals? Let’s say by mistake I tell one of your so-called friends about recent events, thinking by mistake he is actually a friend of mine. How will he react? Will he do anything to me? Not likely. Instead, he’ll figure it is necessary to eliminate you, because you’re the risk. Are you sure the plans ever really called for you to get out of here in one piece?”
“A bluff, Inspector, but unconvincing. I know enough to get me out of here safely, whereas you still don’t even know the extent of what is going on.”
“And you do? In my country? You think you know the difference between shadow and substance? Between bears and tigers and snakes?” I laughed again. Laugher was better at relieving tension than hitting someone, though I wanted to hit Boswell. “Tell me one thing, then I’ll go for the phone.”
Boswell propped himself up, with his back to the base of the statue. I could tell the effort cost him plenty. “What?”
“Scotch egg.”
“Say that again?”
“Scotch egg, what is it?”
“Where did you hear that term?”
“If my face were as gray as yours right now, I wouldn’t ask questions. I’d answer them. Don’t you know?”
“Of course I know. You don’t think I’m from Scotland, is that it?”
“One thing’s for sure, you’re not a member of the Scottish police, not the regular police, anyway.”
“A Scotch egg is an egg covered with pork sausage.”
“Disgusting.”
Boswell smiled briefly. “There, Inspector, we agree.” He winced suddenly, then moaned, and his head fell forward. When he looked up, his eyes weren’t focusing. “Now find a phone, will you? This leg is bad. It isn’t a simple fracture or I’d hobble out of here all the way back home.”
“How did you plan it?”
“You said you’d get the phone if I answered your question. Do I have to beg for medical help? Is that how things work around here?” He closed his eyes. “I don’t know anything about the plan, not in detail. I came in late. They gave me the hurry-up treatment, sort of like training someone for only one parachute jump—just enough to get out of the plane and onto the ground in one piece. One of my jobs was to keep you occupied. We heard from somewhere that you were involved, and Molloy said you’d be trouble, that you had to be neutralized. Nearly succeeded, didn’t I?” His breathing was becoming labored.
“If you think so, Superintendent. Tell me, though. You must know something, even a scrap about the planning.”
“Christ almighty. No, I don’t. Not a thing. I can speculate, anyone can speculate. If I speculate, will that get me a doctor?” He licked his lips. “We needed help on the inside. Only two ways to get that. Commitment and money. The first came with the Germans. Old diehard revolutionaries; they convinced someone here, someone big in your leadership, that they opposed the changes in your system and would help to snuff them out. The incident with the British official would bring down the roof on change, that was their sales pitch.”
“And money?”
“Easier. There are always people willing to supply money, especially if they think it will save souls.”
“Good Christians?”
“In the name of the goodness, they will do plenty, Inspector.”
“Why did you put me onto the Germans?”
“I didn’t.”
No, he was right, Miss Chon did. “But you wanted to make sure we could get them.”
“They’re half crazy, Inspector, too rabid for my taste. I see their type at home—different era, same lethal focus on the ideal. We all agreed, once the Germans did their job, they were expendable. They’ll probably never leave this cemetery. That’s the plan. I wanted them out of the way earlier. We could have avoided this sort of a blowup at the end.”
“Maybe that’s why they’re shooting at you, they just caught on.” I got up on one knee and looked around. No one shot at me. “The old man at the temple showed me how the place had been rebuilt over an underground room for a meeting place. Three rifles still packed in shipping crates. A bag of euros, small bills, mostly. And two pairs of stockings. He said a young woman had been there.”
Boswell groaned and grabbed his leg. “None of that interests me, Inspector.”
“I couldn’t tell whether it was the bank clerk or Miss Chon. He said she was speaking in a foreign language. It might have been German, but the old man didn’t know for sure.”
“Miss Chon doesn’t know German, I’m sure of that.”
“Well, what does she know?”
“You haven’t figured her out, have you? She’s working for the Russians, as far as I can tell. Very simple work. Make sure loans get funneled to Koreans who want to do business with Russian companies. Try to keep up with the Chinese. Establish some contacts for later.”
“Why would she work for them?”
Boswell licked his lips. “Why do you think, Inspector? They went to the Kazakh government and told them to find out what would make her sign on. It wasn’t hard.”
“Her son.”
He shrugged. “She told you? That means she wants you to help her.”
Bosworth shook his head. “There seems to be a lull in the action. Why don’t you do something besides sit and talk?”
“Alright, I’ll go for the phone. If there’s no more shooting, I’ll be back in around five minutes, maybe ten.”
“Stay down. Dieter is a good shot with that hunting rifle.”
“Well, we know he can hit a dog at point-blank range. What’s the pen in his pocket?”
“Don’t try to write with it. It’s explosive, so he won’t be captured. Pulls the cap and bang! It’s supposed to blow his head off.”
“Hell of an operation,” I said. “Sounds like one of ours.”
3
I ran back, keeping as low as I could. “Found the phone, Superintendent.” Boswell was sitting up, facing the statue. He started wheezing just as he pitched forward. I turned him over. His right hand was shattered where he’d tried to block a bullet. There was a hole in his throat, and another in his cheek, just under the eye. He blinked at me and moved his good hand, so I thought he might have a chance, but then he shuddered and was still. None of the wounds was big; they were from a small-caliber pistol. There was the pop of a shot off to my left. It seemed far away, but in these hills, you couldn’t be sure.
I moved off in the direction of the sound, rested against a stunted tree for a moment while the sweat poured off my face, then scrambled across an open area to the top of a small rise covered with azalea bushes. I poked my head around the side. At the bottom of the opposite slope, I could see someone sunning himself, his shirt off. It seemed odd, under the circumstances.
I stood up and walked slowly down the hill, a stupid target, a stupid way to come down a hill on this spring day, the sky too high, the light too crisp, a breeze so slight that it barely rustled Yang’s hair. He lay on his back, one arm stretched away from his body, the other flung across his chest. He had shot himself in the heart, not an easy thing to do, but I had no doubt it was important for him, to aim at what he thought he had long ago lost. He had held the pistol close, there were powder marks, but still visible was the small tattoo over his heart, an aiming point he’d paid to have burned into his skin so he would not miss when the time came.
I knew that whatever had been in him, all color, all experience, everything from a lifetime of pain, was drifting out, bit by bit, even through that tiny hole in his chest. If there was any laughter, it had left long ago. I picked up the pistol he had dropped and put it in my belt. The sound of children’s voices floated upward. He’d held those until the end, and now they were free.
4
When I walked back to the top of the hill, the man in the brown suit was waiting, looking down at Yang’s body. “Let him be,” he said. “He did us a favor, killing the Scotsman. I knew you wouldn’t do it. Though you should have, Inspector, it was your job.”
“My job? My job was solving the robbery. I almost did it, too.”
“Forget the robbery, Inspector. In fact, forget this whole thing.”
“Sure, forgetting is good.” I thought of Miss Chon. “A good habit, forgetting. But first I need to know a few details. Gives me more to forget, if that makes any sense. I think it does to you.”
“I owe you nothing, Inspector. But go ahead.”
“Who does Han work for?”
This made the man in brown smile. “Believe it or not, Inspector, I don’t really know. He doesn’t work for me. Beyond that, it was something I had on my list of things to find out. That’s why no one else is going to know about Yang’s death, or Boswell’s, no one but us for a couple of days. I want to see who scrambles around, trying to find them. No one is to know, not even SSD.”
“Han is SSD?”
“Very unlikely. He’s too clever, in his own way. He’s just attached to them for the moment.”
I nodded. “What about the special group, the ones with new shirts?”
“Might be connected to the army, might not. This much I know, they did a better job dressing them than training them. The group wasn’t as efficient as someone hoped. Apparently, it was formed to support the overall operation, and to tag people that needed to be eliminated at some point.”
“You know who’s on the list?”
“Better not to know, Inspector. Those sorts of lists are always upsetting.”
“Can I give you a theory? The bank robbery was just a diversion.”
“Nice theory, but wrong. They were serious about the robbery; at first they thought it would be enough, but then they got worried and decided to add a layer. Layers are always bad. They knew someone on the outside was playing, but they thought they had control of the whole operation. You, as it turned out, were a complicating factor.”
“Not by choice.”
“They knew you’d hang on, even if you said you wanted to dump the case. You are one hell of a problem, Inspector, for everyone.”
“I’m the one who tipped you off, remember?”
“We must have been at different sessions. You weren’t very helpful at all. You spent most of the time sparring with me, although the information you passed on about the temple having been rebuilt recently turned out to be useful. My people suspected you were in the middle of it. No one could believe you kept drifting into our sights like you did.”
I remembered that afternoon when I had the sense that I was someone’s prey. “You had people on me all the time?”
“Now and then. After you drove the Scotsman around the city, the concern spiked. And when the door to his room at the Koryo closed with you inside, it was almost decided to pack you off to the mountains.”
“But someone objected.”
“Someone did.”
There wasn’t much sense in saying thank you again, so I didn’t.
“Now I have a question, Inspector. He mentioned Prague to you?”
“I don’t think he said anything, no.” On the hilltop, looking at Yang’s body, it didn’t seem like a good idea, discussing Prague.
The man in the brown suit nodded. “If you say so.” Not that he believed me for a moment.
“You knew Boswell?”
“Me?” He smiled. “Until he showed up here, I never met the man. He wasn’t a policeman, though I know you eventually realized that. Based on how he went about his business, it looks like he had other connections. He acted more like an internal operative than he did someone who was used to being overseas. Of course, I’ll never know for sure.” The man in the brown suit laughed. “I rarely know anything for sure. You impress me as someone who doesn’t suffer from that same fate, Inspector.”
“That’s a relief.”
“Let me rephrase my question. Did Boswell say anything to you before he died?”
“No.”
The man in the brown suit looked at me. “You two were up there for quite a few minutes. You must have talked about something.”
“We did. Scotch eggs.”
He thought about this for a moment. “You realize, they decided to neutralize you. That’s why they let it be known you’d been talking to someone named Molloy, thinking you’d run into their arms.”
I figured it was time to change the subject. “Why were you on the train, staring at me that day?”
“I wasn’t staring, Inspector. I was just observing, quietly.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“No, it isn’t, is it? Let’s just say, I’d already heard something about Prague, and I needed to get a sense of who you were. The question was starting to gnaw at me, what would happen when those same rumors reached you. I wasn’t sure; after I raised it during our”—he paused—“our session, either you would get mad at me, or you would get mad at them. I bet on the latter.”
“Am I so predictable?” The breeze had died, and the sun was hot. It occurred to me that spring never lasted as long as I hoped. “I’m just an insect in one of those webs?”
“Even insects fly off in strange directions. No, that’s why it was a bet, and all I could bet was that your grandfather’s blood runs in your veins.”
“My grandfather?” I looked over at the rows of graves on the hillside. “I thought you said we should let the dead rest in peace.”
“We’ve just had a shootout in a cemetery, Inspector. I don’t think anyone is sleeping soundly.”
“One or two more questions. Do you mind?”
“We’re on the top of a hill with no one around, no one that can still hear us, anyway. We both live by asking questions, Inspector, go ahead.”
“What if I ask you about silk stockings?”
“The Russian.” There was no hesitation. “He works part-time for SSD; the rest of the time he works against them. I don’t worry much about him, as long as I know where he is. I’ve never heard a single piece of information that came from him that could be trusted.”
I looked down at Yang. The man in the brown suit took off his jacket and hung it neatly over his arm. “What about Pang?”
The man in brown paused. “He didn’t want to come back in. He said he’d done enough already. But he couldn’t resist women with small waists.” So, Pang worked for him, and he didn’t care if I drew the conclusion about who had broken Pang’s cover.
“And Miss Chon? She seems to be in the center of a lot of this. If you drew one of your spiderwebs, she’d be the spider in the center. Though that wasn’t the way it was on the chart you showed me.” I didn’t believe Boswell’s story about her working for the Russians, channeling money. She was too complicated for something that simple. No one would waste her talents on that.
The man in brown turned abruptly and led the way back to the cars. When we got there, he put his hand on my right shoulder. “I’d say that it’s over, Inspector, except it never happened.”
5
The next morning, Han was sitting in the office; Min was looking out the window. Neither spoke, and from the way the air was not moving, they hadn’t said much in the last several minutes. Han looked exhausted, like he had been up all night. When Min turned around, he had a bandage on his forehead.
“What happened to you?” I waited at the door.
“Don’t stand there, Inspector. Come in and sit down.” Min put his hand to his head. “No one believes it, but I fainted. About three o’clock this morning, I finally got home and opened the door. Next thing I knew, I was on the floor. Not fainted, exactly. I’d say it was more like I collapsed, keeled over.” He paused and waited.
“Swooned.” Han shrugged. “In the middle of the biggest damned incident of the century, your chief inspector fell over. Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone.” He stood up and straightened his cuffs. His shirt was clean, fresher than he was. “Someone might think you did good work on this one, Inspector. I don’t. So I’ll tell you what. Say something nice about me in your report, I’ll do likewise. Of course, they’re going to come down hard on you about Yang, but that will be for your ministry to deal with. There are enough problems to go around.”
I wasn’t in the mood to be threatened, not by Han. “What report? I’m not writing anything. You were in the lead, Han. That means you get to explain all the shot-up trees in the cemetery, and why nobody can find two Germans, one of whom has a hunting rifle and is an excellent shot. You took over the investigation, you deal with it. I suppose your report will include something on the bank manager. Like who she really is. Or did she work for you?”
Han shook his head slowly. “That woman came out of nowhere. And she’s protected, I don’t know by whom. You were right, she doesn’t have a file, or if she does, whoever has it is keeping it out of sight.”
“No one comes out of nowhere, Han. What about the clerk, for example? She came from somewhere. Who approved her for the bank? She didn’t just walk in the front door and ask for a job. Something’s missing from her file, incidentally. She was inside for the bank robbery, wasn’t she?”
“Her?” Han put on his sunglasses. “No, she was working for us the whole time. At least we got that much right.”
“That’s what you’ll put in your report, I suppose. Actually, did you know she was working for Boswell?”
“For Boswell? Very unlikely. In fact, impossible.” Though he didn’t seem completely sure. “What makes you think that?”
I hadn’t liked Han from the beginning, and I didn’t like him now, especially because I still didn’t know who he was working for. “Boswell was part of whoever it was on the outside that planned the bank robbery, which you probably knew. He was well acquainted with the Germans, which you might have known. And he was here to supervise the assassination attempt, at least make sure the final steps came off smoothly, which you may have guessed. You were supposed to disrupt the plan, watch it as it developed, and then disrupt it at the end, the very end. I was just along to give you an excuse to stay close. Yang was the bait; he was supposed to get as many wolves after him as possible. The man was so confused, he was willing to do it. You must have made sure Yang was at the scene, at the guesthouse, because Boswell didn’t. In fact, Boswell was unhappy Yang was in the car; he was suspicious about who Yang was working for.”
Han sat down and took off his glasses. “What does that have to do with the bank clerk?”
“The clerk was seen with the Germans in the hills, at that temple. I don’t think she was there to make a donation.”
“The old man has disappeared. We need to talk to him.”
“You need to talk to a lot of people, especially Boswell, but he’s dead, and so is Yang.” The man in brown wouldn’t be happy I told Han. Not that I cared.
Han seemed to relax. “Well, well.” He stood up again and walked to the door. “Remember that desk, the one in the bank? You were right, it was pine on the outside. But inside it was something else.”
“Like what?”
“Something hard, sort of pretty. Rare, maybe. The desk was rebuilt so it could handle special equipment. All new.”
“SSD?”
“Don’t make me laugh. Since when does SSD know how to handle special equipment? They can’t even deal with their own phones.”
“What about the wood? You mind if I take a look?”
“I don’t mind, but I don’t think it will do you any good. After we took the desk apart, I told them to burn it.” He smiled, then turned to go. “I never fixed your cell phone, did I, Inspector. Sorry, it looks like you’re stuck with it.” He fluttered his hands delicately. “Oh, and one more thing. Yang and the bank clerk were related, did you know that? She was his niece. Her aunt died in that fire.”
Min put his head in his hands.
6
I overslept and had to drive fast to the airport. Whether she was in the middle of everything that had happened or just wandered in, I still didn’t know. Pang, the man with the shoulders, might have figured it out; maybe that’s why he ended up floating in the river. Dead men didn’t seem to upset her; she hadn’t seemed upset when I told her that Boswell had died in the cemetery.
“It may seem cruel, Inspector, but I discovered a long time ago that he was evil, in his own way. I vowed I would never forgive him, and I never will. Anyway, that’s what cemeteries are for, isn’t it, dead bodies?” She was tidying up papers at the bank, shredding some documents, putting others in stacks on a desk. “They took away that other desk again. I can’t work when the furniture keeps disappearing, but that’s not the point. You see, Inspector, I’ve decided this banking business isn’t what I want to do.” She gave me a rueful smile, only I could tell it wasn’t rue that was driving her thoughts.
“You need any help, tidying up?”
“Thank you, I can handle it.” She gave me another smile, this one a little more positive, but she still didn’t put everything she had into it. She was concentrating on the shredding. “I’ve realized this isn’t my future, not here.”
“You’re leaving?”
“On tomorrow’s plane.”
I considered this. “You need a ride to the airport? I could swing by and pick you up.”
“That’s kind of you, but it’s all arranged. Too bad we didn’t have a chance to get to know each other better, Inspector.” This time there was no smile. “I was hoping we would. I had the feeling you were interesting, somehow. When you agreed to come to my apartment, I thought we would comfort each other.” She looked away.
“Me?” I felt combustible all of a sudden. Then the image of Pang’s body floated into my mind. She was down to one pile of papers. I didn’t think she should be shredding anything; on the other hand, Min had told me that we had been ordered to stay away from the bank, which meant I had no jurisdiction here.
7
“SSD has completely taken over the case, Inspector,” Min had said before I drove to the bank to see Miss Chon. “What’s left of it. The good part is that the whole thing is such a mess, the Minister was glad to let it go.” He got up and started to pace. I’d never seen him do that in his own office.
“There’s a bad part?” I thought that on the truck up to the mountains, I’d prefer to stand and have the wind on my face, if that was possible. Min wouldn’t care; he probably wouldn’t speak for the whole trip.
“The bad part is, this goes on SSD’s tally for cases solved.”
“I thought there wouldn’t be any record at all. They didn’t solve anything.”
“Neither did you.”
I looked out the window at the gingko trees. Their branches were brushing against the side of the Operations Building in the breeze. Then again, perhaps it would be better to sit in the back of the truck.
“Okay, I stay away from the bank,” I said to be agreeable. Nothing ever changed. This had been a case we never should have touched; now the only trace of it would be an inflated number in SSD’s annual report. The details wouldn’t be in the files, except on some piece of paper with a vaguely worded entry justifying extra expenses to clean up the cemetery. Not my problem. I turned to walk out the door. “I’ve got other places to visit. There’s a new club in my sector, I’m told.”
When I came through the entrance of the terminal building, I heard the announcement for passengers to proceed to immigration. I ran up the stairs into the waiting hall. She wasn’t there, not in the restaurant, not at the counter buying a last-minute souvenir. I forced myself to relax and began a careful survey, sweeping the room degree by degree. I spotted her talking to a foreigner, a tall man, laughing and resting his hand lightly on her arm. They moved easily into the line to go through the final document check. At the last minute, she turned and looked straight at me, as if she knew where I had been the whole time. She didn’t change expression; she may have nodded slightly, unless that was my imagination.
I wanted to walk over to her, to say good-bye; instead, I turned away. Standing across the room, in front of the big window overlooking the tarmac, was a man wearing a brown cloth cap. Somehow, it wasn’t a surprise. The man ignored me but watched Miss Chon closely, with a faraway smile on his lips. A burst of laughter rose above announcements and the talking and the farewells. The Italian group was going through the line. The cape-man hung back; he hugged a Korean woman and kissed her on both cheeks. It must have been their guide. She waved sadly until they were out of sight. Nothing to do with her or them, just an ancient bond between the traveler and the one left behind. I wondered why Miss Chon hadn’t waved, or was I the one who should have? When I looked back at the window, the man in the brown cap was gone.
I waited until all the passengers were loaded onto the bus, then showed my ID to a girl in a blue uniform and pushed my way past to the door that led out to the planes. The bus had just pulled up to the only aircraft with any activity around it—a fuel truck, a black sedan, a few officials standing under the wings with big hats and walkie-talkies. The passengers climbed the stairs; two or three turned for a last look before disappearing inside. The doors closed; the plane rolled slowly down the long taxiway, turned the corner, and was out of sight. A minute later, there was a far-off rumble of the engines. As it rose above the trees, I spotted the plane in the distance, climbing into the sky. It banked away to the west; the sun flashed against the wings. I stood and watched for a long time, longer than necessary, long past the point there was anything left to see.