The other end wasn't cowed. "The province is locked up top to bottom.
No trains move without authorization. Those are my orders, so don't threaten me."
"Don't worry, friend, this isn't a threat. This is Senior Colonel Kim, Military Security, acting on direct and personal instructions of Colonel Yun, Haeju Field Headquarters. Get a train up here on the double, or I'll see you tomorrow-say, about midnight?"
Nobody in his right mind would follow an order like that.
Nobody did.
PART
So long was I on the northern frontier, Even my dog growls at my footsteps, I had hoped to sing with friends beneath The stars on my return, but some have died, And two have moved to Pyongyang, much the same thing.
– – Hong Ki Bo (166^-1710)
JL Jl s soon as I got off the train in Pyongyang, I called the office. They gave me a terse detail or two.
"That's it?" I wasn't in the mood for incomplete information anymore.
They squeezed out another sentence. Then, almost as an afterthought, "One more thing. Pak said if you called, he wants you over at the Koryo, eighth floor." There was a brief pause. "Where you been for the past few days?"
"No place good."
It wasn't far from the station to the hotel, and anyway I needed the exercise, so I walked. I considered getting a cup of tea in the hotel coffee shop but decided to do it on the way out. The elevator man was dozing in a chair. When I told him I wanted the eighth floor, he hesitated.
"Ministry of People's Security." I showed him my ID. He frowned.
There was only one room with an open door on the eighth floor.
Even from the hall, it was obvious that the place had not been properly secured or searched. There were no signs of the bits of tape that are supposed to be put on the door frame to show that a crime scene has been gone over, red tape for fingerprints, blue for the crime photographer.
At one point, there used to be a piece of yellow if a guard was posted to restrict entry, but yellow tape is hard to get, so you don't see much of it anymore on door frames.
I knew what had happened; I'd been through it before. The place had been treated more like a museum than a murder scene, officials rotating glumly through, stopping here and there, a few rocking back and forth as they stood, glancing at their watches and wondering if it was near lunchtime. If there was a single real clue left in the room, it would be a miracle. Hotel security had wandered in-the piece of green tape on the hallway door was theirs-but they probably accomplished nothing useful beyond nervously gripping a chair for support, fretting about getting blamed, and wondering how to make a finding of "natural causes" compatible with a crushed skull.
2
"No good, Inspector. I'm not interested in police business. Maybe some other time."
"Patience." He closed his notebook. "You owe me a thanks. I told you the color of the railway phone."
"You also gave me a police telephone number, which I can't use. Do I believe you about Kang killing that Middle Eastern fellow?"
"He wasn't Middle Eastern, not for the last fifteen generations, anyway.
"
"People keep track?"
"Sometimes. I may have been paying more attention than normal because of the way he had his nose stuck in my face."
"Why should I care about this body at the hotel?"
A CORPSE IN THE KORYO I v/
"If you want to know about Kang, that's the only way to do it."
"Kang must have decided he could trust you, if he told you anything about thefapan operation. Who did he first hear it from? Pak?"
"What makes you think Pak knew anything aboutfapan?"
The Irishman smiled. "I don't know anything about your sad country.
That's why I'm investing in all of this tape." He pointed at the recorder.
"I've been to fapan, though." He wiggled his eyebrows and laughed. "You thought I'd never been in the mysterious East, didn't you, Inspector?"
"You ever get to Pyongyang, Richie, call me. I'll take you to dinner, that's a promise."
3
From my conversation with the office before coming over to the Koryo, I knew that hotel security had done at least one thing right: They'd called the liaison office in the People's Security Ministry as soon as the body was discovered. From there everything went wrong. There had been a moment of genuine panic at the Ministry when the first identification, based on a card in the blue polyester pants pocket, suggested the deceased was a Finnish citizen, and worse, an inspector for the International Atomic Energy Agency. Panic led to a call directly to the Foreign Ministry duty officer, breaking all rules. The chain of command was supposed to run through hotel security to the police, then to the party's security organization, from there to the party liaison in the Foreign Ministry, and only then to the Ministry's unfortunate duty officer, usually someone junior. That night, not only was the duty officer junior, but because it was a Saturday, it was his very first shift alone. He didn't bother to look in his instructions manual to see that he wasn't supposed to take a call about the murder of a foreigner from anyone but his own party liaison man. Even so, he was smart enough to realize that the death of an IAEA inspector would be a disaster.
Too bad he did the worst thing possible. He called a friend of his, a Captain Choi in the Military Security Command. Choi, smart and on his way up, checked his manual and alerted his duty officer, who called the police to ask why the hell the Foreign Ministry was involved in a state security investigation.
This caused seventy-two hours of complaints and accusations by various liaison officers, during which time the body was moved to the central morgue, well before any sort of crime scene report was written, much less filed. Just as things were calming down, the Military Police of the Pyongyang Military Garrison raised hell. It was one of those rare occasions when they were supposed to be alerted, but no one had their number-and even if they had, no one would have remembered to call.
Just as I walked through the front door of the room, Chief Inspector Pak emerged from the bathroom, wiping his hands on his shirt.
"About time you showed up, Inspector."
"A pleasure, I'm sure. Do you want to hear about my trip and my conversations with Kang?"
"Screw your trip. Screw Kang. I have a dead foreigner in the morgue that no one can identify, cause of death unknown, time of death unknown, and a summons to see our friend Kim of Military Security this afternoon at three. Care to join me?"
"Pass. I've spent the past week dodging him, and I have reasons not to want to see him anytime soon. You were right. It's a good idea for me to keep as far away from him as possible."
"Luckily, someone is leaning on him over this case. I don't know who, yet, but as long as he is feeling some pain, he'll behave with us. I know his type. He's nervous, and he needs help. If this goes bad, he could end up walking to work in a coal mine."
I had developed a sour feeling about this case from the moment I heard how the notification had gone out of channels. The fact that there were no signs of an investigation had set off more warning bells.
A CORPSE IN THE KORYO
Now I knew I was right. This was not an incident we wanted to touch.
There was no way to win. Somebody's ox was going to be gored, and everyone else would try to make sure it was ours. Nothing was moving the right way. Simply getting things unsnarled to zero would take me a week, and by then there would be no trail left to follow.