Jeno accelerated slightly and turned into the narrow street. "I'll drop you just past that warehouse, up there, on the right. You'll have to jump out while the car is moving. Are you trained for that?" It wasn't a skill we used in Pyongyang, but that was no business of Mossad.
"See you around," I said and reached for the door handle.
"You might want to release your seat belt first, Inspector."
"European sequencing," I said. Fortunately, we had slowed enough so that when I jumped out, I only stumbled against a lightpost and fell into a pile of boxes. Jeno?s car disappeared; the one that had been following us squealed around the corner and roared past.
When I limped in the front door of my hotel, M. Beret was sitting with a book in his lap, dozing. He looked up when the door clicked shut.
"Ah, Inspector. Alarm bells have been ringing. Your mission is in an uproar wondering where you are. The talks were recessed and angry words have been exchanged. Your side says you have been kidnapped. Quite exciting. And you? Been skiing on the Italian side?"
"I don't ski."
"Then you must have bruised your shoulder jumping from a car. It takes practice."
"How would you know if I bruised my shoulder?"
"You're limping like a bird with a sprained wing."
"I'm tired, if you don't mind. I'd like to get some sleep. Will you do me a favor and tell my mission that I was knocked unconscious in a disco and nearly suffocated in the crush of young, sex-starved bodies, but that I'm alright now?"
"Of course, Inspector, that is probably as believable as anything." He closed his book and watched me climb the stairs. "How was the lamb, by the way?"
"Good night, monsieur."
I heard him move softly to the door.
Chapter Five
"The talks are locked up. We have no instructions; none will show up until we have sent back a good explanation for where you have been." The security man at the mission was pasty-faced and nervous. He had already smoked two cigarettes and was fumbling to light a third. The ambassador sat quietly to the side. His aide was taking copious notes, though since nobody was saying much, it was hard to see what there was to record so far. Long silences can speak volumes, but it can be tricky getting them down on paper. When I first joined Pak's section, I would polish my interrogation reports for hours, noting everything. Remarks, silences, facial tics-everything. Eventually, Pak told me that the Ministry had requested we submit something shorter. No more than one page for each report. "Boil it down," they told him. I told Pak we'd lose the nuance. He laughed. "Keep a special folder for nuance, O. Once a year we'll dump it out on your desk and sort through the pile."
"We're waiting, Inspector. You were gone for twenty-four hours. Thursday night to Friday night. Where were you?" I recognized the man talking as the driver who met me at the airport when I arrived. In this room, he didn't look like a driver anymore, or sound like one. The security man observed him sourly.
Interesting, I thought. "Turkish food," I said. "Since I was told not to attend Thursday night's dinner with the delegation, I went out for Turkish food. I think I drank too much of that ugly liquor of theirs; when I came to, I was in a pile of boxes on a street near a nightclub. It was quite bizarre, actually. Hard to believe, but there you are. Keep away from that liquor, that's my advice. If you don't mind my asking, what do my drunken wanderings have to do with holding the negotiations? It's not as if I add a lot to the discussions. I heard you accused them of kidnapping me. Why would they want to do that?"
The door opened, and a woman handed a sealed envelope to the ambassador. She waited while he signed a log. "I think this might save us some time," he said. "Give me a moment to read it." He carefully opened the envelope and looked at the single sheet of paper inside. "That's clear enough," he said when he had read it through twice. He looked at the man standing next to me. "No more questions."
"What?" The security man ground out his cigarette. "Says who?"
The ambassador's aide grimaced but didn't stop writing. The ambassador folded the paper and put it back in the envelope. "Inspector, I am going to request that you be sent home immediately. That's a formality. I don't really require approval. I have good and sufficient reason to order you out on my own authority, even before I receive guidance from Pyongyang. Your brother and I had a conversation the other day, and now I see why he warned me against letting you stay. You are disrupting my operations here. Because I do not know what you are doing or why, I consider you a menace. The Swiss are also unhappy, and if they are unhappy, so am I. The last thing we can afford is to have the Swiss snapping at us. They don't want a defection here; neither do I. It doesn't matter what airplane leaves in the next three hours, or where it goes. I want you on it."
Defection? Had my brother spread the word that I was thinking of defecting? There was a knock on the door, and the same woman came in with another envelope. The ambassador signed the log again, and this time ripped the envelope open. "Sons of bitches," he muttered. The aide put down his pen.
"I take it the inspector should not pack his bags just yet." The man who wasn't really a driver didn't sound surprised.
"Handwritten instructions from the Top." The aide and the security man glanced nervously heavenward. "He stays." The ambassador gave me a malign look. I didn't know him at all; our paths had never crossed before, and if he had passed through my sector in Pyongyang, I hadn't noticed. But he definitely didn't like me. "There are wheels spinning, Inspector. I strongly advise you stay clear of things that don't concern you." He paused. "Mountain lakes are deep, just remember that. Perhaps it would be good for you to start wearing your badge. It might help with identification." The aide closed his notebook and slipped out of the room. The ambassador turned to a young woman who had been lounging near the window. "The talks should resume the day after tomorrow. Have the delegation pass a message to the other side tomorrow morning telling them we have new instructions. Let them fuss with that idea for twenty-four hours. Don't say anything about the reappearance of the wanderer." Another malign look was flung in my direction.
In the hallway, I passed Mr. Roh. It was time for our talk. "I'm going out for some fresh air," I said. "I hear the fountain in the park, the one near the rose garden, is nice in the afternoon light." He nodded and kept walking.
2
A smart young man-that was what I concluded when I saw Roh sitting on one of the white benches beside the fountain about an hour later. Smart, a little reckless, maybe a potential security risk. That's how it would go down in his file if anyone spotted him here talking to me. A security risk because he was out meeting with a security person from another office without checking first with his own. And I knew he hadn't checked with his own, because they never would have let him come here alone to sit with me. So he was a risk, and it wasn't my worry. It meant he'd answer some questions, as long as I gave him a comfortable lead-in. His head was down and he might have been reading the book in his lap. But he wasn't; he was waiting. As soon as he heard my steps on the gravel path, he looked up.
"Nice weather," I said. "A good day to sit underneath pine trees."
"This could get me into a lot of trouble," he said. "The word going around the halls is, the ambassador doesn't like you."
"But you decided it was worth the risk. Otherwise you wouldn't be here."
"I was curious. People have been wondering about you ever since you showed up."
"Have they? And why should that be? I'm just a servant of the people, doing the people's business." He was smart and he was curious, but he knew enough not to trust me yet. That was alright. I didn't like people who trusted me too quickly. They could go the other way just as fast.