Kang's problems might be linked to an interagency grudge, but I doubted it could be the whole story. Pak wouldn't put me in the middle of something like that. Pak's words about "all hell breaking loose" went beyond bureaucratic tussles, and Pak had a good sense of the tides in the capital. More than that, he had good sources, including the Minister, who would feed him tidbits of information about things that were stirring in the Center, to get his reaction. Pak was discreet; he never said anything to me directly about these conversations. If there was something I needed to do my job, he had a way of telling me what I had to know-not a shred more. Kang said I was here to help. Do what? I didn't work for Kang, and I didn't have any orders from my office instructing me to help him; we had no arrangements even for liaison without strict approval. So why the hell was I limping around an outlaw town on the Chinese border, peddling baskets of nonexistent fish?
9
The Irishman took a notebook from his pocket. He flipped through a few pages, stopped, flipped through several more. He found the page he wanted and bent its corner. "Finally, we're getting somewhere. Elena was in Manpo. At the Manpo Inn."
"I thought you wanted to know about Kang."
"Do you mind if I steer this car?" He looked at his watch and made a note.
"You going somewhere?"
"Some coincidence, you meeting Elena."
"She a friend of yours?"
"Never met the lady. Not partial to her type."
"Meaning what?"
He looked closely at me. "Steady on, Inspector. I didn't ask before, but you don't mind if I call you that, do you?"
"You want another word out of me, try to keep to the subject-Kang."
He whistled softly, "fumpy fim, you need pills or something to calm you down. Alright, alright, leave Elena be for the moment. Let's talk about Kang. You said he has a daughter. She speaks French. Unusual?"
"Why should it be unusual? Lots of people speak French. Most of France does, so I'm told."
He turned off the recorder, "fesus. Why don't you just point out for me the one or two subjects that you're not touchy about, and we'll stick to those. You have contradicted everything I've said tonight. Everything. Your people always like that?"
"My people? No, we mostly laugh from morning to night, joking around, you know, like life is a Caribbean island and we're waiting for the big white ship to come into port. Life's a lot of fun, that's what we always say to each other. That's what the old lady must have been telling that girl in the field."
The Irishman stared at the wall behind me. Finally, he broke the silence.
"Kang's daughter. Why was she on the border? Trouble with her behavior, so they booted her out of Pyongyang? Family difficulties?"
I shook my head. "I was just beginning to think you knew something about Kang. Maybe I was too quick."
"Finally, a sign of self-doubt. This is good."
"I thought he was sailing alongside you, not working for your organization, exactly, but moving on a parallel course, just out of reach. Now I discover, when you suddenly lost track of him, you got worried. I'm wondering why."
"Kang is an interesting character."
"I thought so. Very complicated man. The sun bounced off him in a thousand directions. Like a diamond. Built up quite a list of enemies, as far as I could tell."
"Nice image, Kang as a diamond. How many karats, would you say?" "A diamond in a garbage pile, who cares what it might have fetched on the world market."
The Irishman clicked his pen.
10
I've seen the sun rise over the hills a thousand times, in different seasons, in different weather, sometimes eager for the day, sometimes not.
Each time, I waited for that absolute moment of peace that comes the instant the hills and the sky, the light and the quiet fuse into one. During one of my first trips abroad, when I was still in the Ministry's liaison office and traveling to Berlin to help set up a visit by the Minister, I'd been ordered to Geneva to pick up instructions that I knew would make no sense and could only complicate my assignment. The instructions never arrived, but it gave me an excuse to sit by the lake on a Sunday morning and watch day break over the Alps.
It surprised me that there was nothing peaceful about dawn creeping across those mountains. I'd seen pictures on calendars, but the pictures all lied; they were too pretty, too smooth, too much sparkle. The peaks I saw clawed the sky, so that the dawn was wounded and the sunlight bled into the day. The Alps weren't a source of serenity. They didn't calm your heart or even make you sad with memories. They hulked over Geneva, defiant, threatening to tumble into the lake at its upper end near a little town called Montreux, scattering the swans and swamping the outdoor restaurants with their yellow umbrellas along the shore. When I thought about it later on the train, I figured that must be why the Swiss were so distant, always looking over their shoulders to make sure those mountains were not about to crush them once and for all.
The hills around Manpo were not soothing, either. They were too close to China maybe, with the same pretensions of grandeur. But there was nothing defiant about them, and there was no danger they would molest the city. The hills were too tired; the city had no virtue to lose.
So there was a separation: Manpo paid no attention to the hills anymore, and the hills disdained the squalid collection of buildings at their feet. Much as the Alps might glower at Geneva, at least it was Geneva they woke with. I couldn't imagine what they would have done if they had to watch over Manpo day in and day out until, pebble by pebble, they were ground down to foothills.
Kang wanted me to get a sense of Manpo, and I could only get that by walking around, not going anywhere special. The more I wandered aimlessly, the less interested any tails would be. Actually, if they were very good, they should become more curious the more I didn't seem to have a destination, but this far out of the capital, it was unlikely there would be anyone who was much good or curious about anything beyond breaking for dinner. All the good people wanted to serve in Pyongyang.
Border cities ended up mostly as security service junkyards-unless a flying squad was sent on a special assignment.
I set out from the Manpo Inn before daybreak and wandered over to the teahouse Kang's daughter ran, on the off chance it would be open. It wasn't, not even a sign of life. No breakfast, but at least I felt rested.
Room 501, which I'd bought with the promise of a bushel of phony Wonsan fish, hadn't been painted recently, unless "recent" had another meaning on the border, but at least it had been quiet. There was a soft knock on the door around four in the morning, but I hadn't ordered room service and wasn't curious who was tiptoeing around at that hour.
When I left the inn, the clerk was standing behind the front desk. He asked if I'd slept well, but I could see his heart wasn't in the leer he tried to push across his face. It occurred to me that I hadn't filled out any registration forms here, either. In this town, it didn't matter who you were.
Besides, all the documentation would be false, and everyone knew it.
Halfway out of town, the dark called it quits and it was day. That suited me fine. I had a feeling I was being followed, and daylight makes it hard to tail someone on a deserted dirt road leading up to the mountains.
Once the climb got steep, I stopped worrying about the tail. If boredom was a problem for these guys, physical exertion was going to be one, too. None of them would want to stick with me all the way up a mountain, and they wouldn't have had time to set up another team, partway up the trail. More than the tail, I was worried about my feet. I knew that if I didn't watch each step, I'd stumble and wrench my back-again.
The road leveled off, and as it did, a view opened up of a dead-end valley. At its mouth, there were two buildings, a guard post, and a black Mercedes, real clean, starting to reflect the few rays of sun that perched on the top of the hills before tumbling onto the scene below. Smoke was coming from a chimney in the building that was still in the shadows.