I said in English: "I'm going to hand you over to the police." I was Clive Ingram, an innocent travel agent, and it was outrageous to find myself attacked like this in my own hotel room.
She didn't answer, but stood quivering with her head still angled to watch the gun. I was aware of warm silk against me, and of the fury that was still in her as I kept the lock on her arms; I could feel blood creeping on my face where her nails had torn the skin close to my eyes, and I knew that if I let her go she'd fly to the gun or spin round and try to blind me.
I told her again that I was going to call the police, this time speaking in French, and her small head jerked upwards as she tried to look at me.
In the same language she said: "I shall kill you." Her breath shuddered out of her with the force of what she was saying.
"Why?"
"One day I shall kill you, however long it takes. Do you understand?"
"Not really." She knew I could snap her fragile arms and finish with it, but she also knew that a civilised male of the species wouldn't want to do that. If I let her trade on it she wouldn't give me a second's chance. "My name is Ingram," I told her wearily, "and I'm an English travel agent on a visit to Seoul. You're mistaking me for someone else." I waited, feeling the small vibration of her heartbeat as her fury went on forcing its rhythm; but her breath was slowing now, and I was encouraged. I wanted to get her out of here, and sleep; I hadn't slept since the flight out from London two nights ago, and the death struggle in Pekin had left me bruised and drained.
It occurred to me that this woman hadn't seen me very clearly in the gloom of the unlit room, so I pulled her backwards and felt for the light switch with my shoulder, moving it down; then I walked her across to the mirror on the dressing-table and for a moment we stared at each other; she was a pure Chinese, her delicate bone structure lit and shadowed by the lamps on the wall and her cinnamon eyes glistening; I looked less elegant, with streaks of blood on my face.
"You see," I told her, "I'm no one you know."
She stared at me for another few moments and then broke, her head going down and the tears coming and her slight body shaking under my hands; and when I released her she covered her face and sank slowly to the floor, the gold embroidery of her long silk hanbok glowing in the light as her black hair fell forward and revealed the pale ivory of her neck. I left her there, going to pick up the gun. She'd come close to killing me and by mistake, and now the reaction was setting in.
For a long time she didn't move, and when the worst of the sobbing was over I asked her gently: "What is your name?"
She turned her tear-wet face. "Soong Li-fei."
"What were you doing in my room?"
I was holding the gun, its trigger-guard hanging from one finger; but she didn't even glance at it.
"It was a mistake," she said, so softly that I only just heard; her French was cultured, with the accent of Touraine.
"What kind of mistake, Li-fei?"
Slowly she straightened up, wiping at her face with the back of her small hands. "It was for my brother. They killed my brother."
The wind was rattling one of the shutters, and I went across to the windows and secured the stay. Her handbag was on the floor near the door, where she'd dropped it; it was of the same dark eau-de-nil silk as her dress. I took it over to her and she found a handkerchief and blew her nose a few times, turning away from me. When she was quiet again I said:
"They killed your brother?" I went over to the handbasin and washed the blood off my face. "Who did?"
"This is the wrong room," she said, "or you are the wrong person. Please let me go now."
"Someone told you I killed your brother?"
"No." She put away her handkerchief and clicked the bag shut. "It was a mistake, m'sieur. I apologise."
"Then someone must have told you that the man who killed your brother would be coming to this room tonight."
"No."
"It's got to be one way or the other, Li-fei."
She watched me with reddened eyes, the last of the tears still glistening on their lids. "I had the room number wrong."
That was possible, but I had to make sure. In the initial phase of a mission I like my privacy.
"Who gave you the room number?"
"I forgot." She was lying with a child's simplicity now, embarrassed, wanting to go. Her lip was trembling and she was making an effort to keep control; it occurred to me that she'd cried tonight from disappointment because I'd been the wrong man and she hadn't been able to avenge her brother.
"When did they kill your brother?" I asked her.
On a sudden sob that she couldn't stop — "Yesterday." I went across to her quickly and held her small cold hands, and she looked up at me in surprise.
"Was this in Seoul?" I asked her.
"No. In Pekin."
My nape crept; but she'd said yesterday, not this morning. "How did they do it?"
She opened the little silk bag quickly, showing me a news cutting folded many times. It was in Korean. "I can't read it," I said.
"It says — " but there was another sob, and she gripped my hands tightly, refusing to break down again. "It says it was a ritual murder, on the steps of a temple." She thrust the small wad of paper back into her bag and closed it.
I felt the tension leaving me. "What was his name?"
"Soong Yongshen."
"I'm sorry. Do you live with your parents?"
"I have no parents."
And no brother now. "I'll see you home," I told her. "Where do you live?"
"No. Just let me go, please.
The monsoon sang through the street outside, banging at the shutters and swinging signs on their rusty hinges. It would blow her away, scattering her like fragments of porcelain.
"I'll get a taxi for you downstairs."
"No. I don't live very far away."
I took out the gun and put it into her hands, and her ivory fingers closed round it clumsily, as if she'd forgotten what it was, and what it was for.
"Thank you."
"I'd throw it away, Li-fei."
"No," she said at once. "I will find him, and kill him."
"Where did you get it?"
"From a friend."
I went with her to the door. "What do you do?"
"I'm an official interpreter for the airline."
"French and Chinese. No English?"
"No. Japanese. There are so many who speak English." We were by the door now but I didn't open it yet; I'd been giving her time to recover. "What did your brother do?"
She caught her breath but steadied. "He worked for — for some kind of organisation. I'm not sure."
"Why would anyone want to kill him?"
"He did something wrong. It was something to do with the dreadful thing in Pekin."
"What dreadful thing?"
"The bombing at the funeral."
Blown.
As if from somewhere outside myself I noted that my voice didn't change in the slightest, but my skin was creeping along the whole length of my spine as the nerves reacted.
"What did your brother do wrong, would you think?"
"I don't know."
I'd been in this city three hours and no one had followed me in from the Chinese mainland and only Ferris knew where I was staying and already I was blown and I didn't even know how to start believing it.
She wanted to go but I kept her.
"How do you know he did something wrong?"
"I was told." My voice hadn't changed and my face hadn't changed but her eyes were wider now as she watched me, her own nerves picking up the alarm in mine. There was nothing I could do about that.
"Who told you?"
"It would be dangerous for me to say."