"When do your friends leave?"
"Those two delegations? They aren't my friends. We have different goals, very different. I want to make money. They think I cooperate too much with people who should be stepped on."
"They think we should be stepped on?"
"They did think that before, but now they seem to have changed their minds. That's why they're coming by the planeload to see your officials."
"And what changed their minds?"
He shrugged and then smiled. It was one of those charming smiles that put my hackles on red alert. "That isn't something I would know, now is it? I just want to make some money."
I relaxed a little, it was so ridiculous. "Are you kidding? Money? Here?"
"Sure, why not? You have workers; they know how to obey orders. They're educated and can be trained. I've heard from others who have set up shop here that there are ways of making things work. If you had roads and electricity, I could be the richest man on earth." He paused. "But I can make do with a lot less. What sense is there in being the richest man on earth? A lot of unhappiness is all it brings. You ever hear of King Midas?"
"I slept through the English history classes."
He smiled. "Only one thing I need."
"Sorry, I already told you, your requests for meetings have been denied."
"I heard." He put a hundred-dollar bill on the table, stood up, and walked past the girl at the front counter without paying.
8
The next morning, we met in the lobby. It was so cold the staff all wore overcoats with the collars up and, if they had them, scarves. "Someone from the party will see you at ten o'clock," I said after we shook hands.
"What about the Trade Ministry?"
"It was decided you don't require anyone from the ministries. The party will do fine for your needs."
"And what are my needs?
"That is what you'll explain this morning when you meet someone from the party."
"I suppose this means you are no longer assigned to look after me. So, good-bye, Inspector, thank you for your help."
As we shook hands again, his eyes widened slightly when he felt the bill in my palm.
"You accidentally left something on the table yesterday," I said.
His hand went into his pocket. "It's not polite to refuse a present from a visitor. Every culture has that as a basic rule."
"Perhaps, but I heard somewhere to beware of Greeks bearing gifts. We don't see many Greeks," I said, "so I assumed that went for the Swiss as well."
He smiled, not the charming one.
"Maybe even Pakistanis." It didn't mean anything, or maybe it did. Pakistan was on my mind. Not on my mind, exactly, but just below the surface. Ever since my old friend the acting personnel chief had let me know that someone from Pakistan had gone to Hwadae county, I'd heard a rustling in my subconscious, something stirring, a Siberian wind blowing dead leaves along the frozen ground. Hwadae county was off-limits; we were supposed to report anyone overheard saying anything about the place. It was supposed to be a big secret that things to do with missiles went on up there, but plenty of people had relatives, who had friends, who knew former army buddies who drank too much and said something they weren't supposed to when their heads were lolling and their tongues were loose. If someone from Pakistan had gone to Hwadae, then it wasn't so far-fetched that the special section might have an unusual interest in what happened to a certain Korean woman who died in Pakistan-and something kept telling me that my first wild hunch had been completely right, it had been Pakistan. In the great wide world somewhere else, that might be a stretch. Not here, not in my little corner of reality.
Jeno didn't say anything when I mentioned Pakistanis, but the half-smile normally on his lips vanished into the cold. In that instant, he told me just what I needed to know. I left before his eyebrows slow-danced back into place.
9
After I left Jeno, I sat in the duty vehicle for a few minutes with the engine running and the heater on. Now I was pretty sure she worked at the embassy in Pakistan, or at least found access to a phone there. It was still officially a hunch, but it had become one of those hunches that don't want to get crowded out by other possibilities. Yes, if Pak wanted to argue I'd have to admit it might have been somewhere else; I couldn't prove she'd been in Islamabad. Actually, I wasn't even supposed to prove it; I wasn't supposed to worry about it. It wasn't the sort of fact the broom was supposed to sweep. If the Man with Three Fingers hadn't turned up and sneered, I might have dropped the whole thing, but I didn't want to leave another body lying around my conscience.
The problem was, where to go next? Her husband had an assignment, but doing what? For whom? Her father said she'd complained he was going to get her into trouble. If she was just a wife, how could he get her into trouble with the locals? It wasn't beyond possibility that she had an assignment, too. And if she'd had an assignment, maybe it was connected with why she turned up dead. In that case, there was only one place to begin checking-the Foreign Ministry. It wasn't somewhere I liked to go, but they usually had hot water for tea.
Outside it was frigid but clear, so I decided to leave the car at the hotel and walk. The less I had to drive on slick streets, the better I liked it. There were a few other people out walking, and even a couple of old trucks on the road. I watched them go by, which may be why I didn't notice that the sidewalk down the hill hadn't been cleared. Just as my feet left the ground, an army jeep coming up the hill spun its wheels and slid sideways into a nearby snowdrift. The driver climbed out and looked around. He spotted me on the ground.
"You! Give me a hand." It was an officer, a colonel. Just like I remembered from the army, a colonel always shows up when you least need him. When I didn't move, he bristled. "I said give me a hand. I haven't got all day."
Inquiring why he didn't have a driver didn't seem like a good idea, certainly not while I was on my back. I stood up slowly, careful not to slip again. "I'm on duty, Colonel, and on assignment." It was an assignment I'd given myself, but what the hell. "I'll give you a push, and maybe you can drive me where I need to go. It isn't far."
That bargain didn't seem to go down. "You think you can refuse a direct order from an officer of the People's Army these days? I can have you arrested. I can even have you shot. I can do it myself, if I've a mind."
"You want help on your jeep or don't you?" My feet were getting cold, and my back was sore. If I didn't get somewhere warmer soon, it would stiffen up and I would be hunched over until spring. I wasn't about to stand and argue for a whole afternoon, even a short one in January, with a colonel who didn't rate a driver. He might have me shot, but he didn't look the type to do it himself, certainly not here. There was more and more talk that the army had made a grab for extra status, but that still didn't dictate executing police in broad daylight with no one else in sight. Make sense, you strutting bastard, I thought to myself. Why shoot a monkey to scare the chickens if there are no chickens around to see you do it? Or was it the other way around?
The drive to the Foreign Ministry took less than two minutes. We roared up to the front steps so quickly it startled the sentry, who unfastened the holster at his hip and reached for his pistol. I was barely out of the jeep when the colonel backed into the street at high speed and slid into the square before he regained control, hurrying off in a spray of ice and snow.