The guard had seen me before. He didn't want to move again because if he did, it would disturb the warmth of the posture he had settled into. He flicked his eyes to the door. I went in and up the stairs to the liaison office. I didn't knock.
"Inspector!" The liaison officer had a small electric heater on. That was illegal, but warm. He nodded for me to come over and share the heat. "Is this a pleasant surprise, or have you arrested someone who is going to cause us trouble of a diplomatic sort?"
"I'm on heater patrol."
"Well, you came to the right place." The lights flickered once, then went out. So did the heater. "Funny," he said, "the other day on the radio they announced that the electricity workers had overfulfilled this month's quota."
"Perhaps they were rewarded with today off."
We stood around in the dark, wondering how long it would last this time. Sometimes it was only a few seconds; sometimes it was longer. A few people kept candles in their desks. Apparently, he wasn't one of those. "Don't move, Inspector," he said very softly. "If you move, you'll dissipate the warm air. Just stand still and let it waft slowly up to the ceiling. If we're lucky, Mr. Shin downstairs will do the same, and his heat will be arriving through the floor just as ours goes up to Miss Ban. Imagine the heat going up her legs, will you?"
"I'll do no such thing." I thought about it for a moment, and as I did, the lights went back on. "There, back from vacation. They probably just went out to read the paper. I need a favor-only you owe me, so it really isn't a favor. It's more like payment."
He rubbed his face with both hands, as if he were washing something away, maybe the memory of the last time I had twisted his arm behind his back to give me information. "Very well, though I don't recall your doing anything for me lately."
"Are you going to make me pull your cousin's file again? Selling copper from downed electric lines is still a capital crime."
"What is it I can do for you, Inspector?"
"I need a few facts, that's all."
He was impassive. Finally, he stirred. "If I can."
Just then the lights flickered again, but this time the heater stayed on. "It's the wiring," he said. "The heater draws too much power. You know what they say about this ministry-more heat than light. I'll have to jiggle something."
Maybe people said that about every ministry. "Forget the wires and the cute slogans. I need a woman."
The liaison man looked up, presumably to where Miss Ban sat. "You'll have to get in line, Inspector."
"No, I need information on a woman, a particular woman. She worked in the embassy in Pakistan until recently. Or possibly her husband did. One of them did, anyway. Before that she was in New York." Admittedly, I still didn't know for sure she had even been in Pakistan, but I felt as sure as I could be based on nothing more than a hunch. What I needed was a piece of paper that had it down in black and white. It did no harm to offer up what I thought I knew. If I was wrong, this man would be happy to say so. If I was wrong, I wanted him to smirk and jump in to correct me before he had a chance to realize that maybe it wasn't something he was supposed to do. It was different with the old general. They were like two trees that reacted differently to the same breeze.
"She has a name, I assume."
I wrote it down and pushed it over the desk. He looked, then blew out a puff of air. "A person of interest, apparently. Someone already came and took away her file."
"You saw it before it disappeared?"
"I didn't read it."
"You looked at it; it happened to open as you were retrieving it, and you happened to see something?"
"Some files have clasps on them. This one didn't."
I nodded. "What about the husband?"
"That will take me a while. It's hard to search files when the lights go on and off."
"Give me a call when you find something. If you don't call, I'll be back when you don't expect me, and I might have some wire cutters with me next time." He recoiled slightly. "Find a flashlight somewhere in this building. There's enough light to see the files with that. Maybe Miss Ban can help."
He looked up at the ceiling, but I couldn't see his expression because the lights flickered again and then gave way to the dark. I saw myself out.
10
"Are you actually so at ease with yourself, Inspector? I wonder if you are; or is it that you are as completely empty as always, void of all feeling?" My old friend the acting chief of personnel sat in my office. She didn't have the air of someone who had the hots for me. Her question might have been the start of a late-night argument, just like old times, but it was only noon. It should have been a warning when she called and said she needed to come over. So why did I ignore the warning, the ominous tingle in my spine? Maybe I was distracted by the glare of the sun off the snow on the street outside my window. If I had been wearing my sunglasses, the glare wouldn't have bothered me. If I'd had on my sunglasses when she walked in and sat down, I could have looked directly in her face and she couldn't have seen into my soul, where I was surprised to discover she still lurked. I would have had time to stop myself, to keep my mouth shut. "Me? Ill at ease?" I turned and did the only thing I could. I laughed.
She smiled, and I suddenly remembered she had several. One of them was real, pure starlight and moonbeams. This wasn't it. "Happy to see me again so soon?" She could keep her tone eerily even, the same calm surface that killer sharks love to cruise beneath. She did it before she ripped you apart, tore huge chunks out of your existence before you had time to shout for help. Even now, when her tone was so deadly flat, her face was round and her cheeks dimpled. The smile might be unreal, but the dimples weren't. The dimples killed me. They were mantraps.
All the conversations we'd ever had came back at me. On our walk the other day, I only remembered a few things, snatches of emotions. Now, with her sitting so close, everything was accessible. I frantically rewound all the tapes in my head, trying to remember with precision, to wade through the flood of memory onto something solid, to someplace where I couldn't see her dimples. She didn't help; she just sat and looked into my eyes. Walking beside the river, putting our steps in rhyme, I didn't really have to look at her. Anyway, she had been all business. Mostly all business. But now she was across from me, looking into my eyes. She read everything. Nothing escaped her. That was always the problem. That's probably why they put her in personnel.
There had been a time when I considered poking them out, my eyes, so she couldn't read me. It was the only solution that I could think of short of killing myself, which I didn't want to do at the time. Now this. First the Man with Three Fingers reappears, and now this. I should have done it; I should have poked my eyes out when I had the chance.
"No," I said and should have left it at that, but with her, I couldn't leave things. When she sat there, dimples and all, I was compelled. "I mean, yes, of course I'm happy to see you." I hoped that was all my eyes were saying. "Yes and no." I was talking too much. "No, I'm not empty. I just learned to let go."
"Really? And where did you learn that? After all those years, where did you learn that?"
"Self-taught. Maybe it comes with age." I stared at my hands. They seemed familiar, which was a relief. "You look good. It's nice to see you again. So soon, I mean. Twice in so short a time."
"You're a liar. I could always tell when you lied to me, especially when you were talking to your hands."
"You make it sound like it happened a lot."
"It was constant, only you didn't know it because you had no idea who you were then. And that's putting it nicely."
"And now?"
She stood up and moved closer, right next to me; I could feel myself filling and emptying again, like a minor star pulsing in a faraway corner of the universe.