Inspector O 01 - A Corpse in the Koryo

by James Church

  "The clerk won't care."

  "You know, he gave me--"

  "Forget what he gave you. He's dead."

  "When?"

  Kang's lips tightened, and he shook his head slightly. "Don't ask me.

  Probably before they stuffed some filthy video in his mouth. At least I hope so. He gave you something?"

  "Didn't you just say to forget what he gave me?"

  "Don't be dense, Inspector. A name card, a piece of paper."

  "You mean this?" I reached into my shirt pocket and pulled out the card with the old train schedule on it.

  He took it from my hand. "You never saw this, or anything like it."

  "The clerk passed it to me, but he didn't say who it was from."

  "You gone deaf? You never saw this card. It wasn't for you."

  "It was from Grandma Pak, wasn't it? I didn't connect it at the time, but the clerk mentioned her name."

  "Back off, Inspector. Let it be."

  "She works for you?"

  "You don't let up, do you?"

  "What's in Najin?"

  "If I told you, I'd have to kill you."

  I almost laughed, until I saw he had unbuttoned his coat.

  The truck rattled up to the front of the railroad station. Kang handed me my bag. "Good luck. Don't worry, I wouldn't have killed you, I'm not deranged. A little too much to think about, that's all." As I took the bag, I noticed it was heavy. Kang sat back. "A jar of blueberry jam," he said.

  14

  The train to Pyongyang was late. Not like some places, where a late train means twenty minutes, even an hour on a bad day. This train didn't come that day, or the next. People drifted in and out of the station. A few set up housekeeping. There were no station police that I could see, no one checking papers, but everything stayed orderly enough. Jeeps squealed around the corner and passed by every hour, sometimes honking at a trader walking his bicycle, carrying an impossible load too slowly across the road. I kept away from the windows and back in the shadows as much as I could. At night there were no lights, but in the day shafts of sunlight played across the floor. The place smelled moldy, maybe because the roof leaked and the ceiling beams were rotting. There was probably a room reserved for officials, with more light and fewer puddles on the floor, but I didn't want to attract attention or have to answer any questions.

  I found a dry spot against the wall, put the bag under my head, and tried to sleep. The jar of blueberry jam kept me awake. When I reached to move it aside, I realized what I should have known. There were some slices of black bread and a bottle of beer as well--and also a note: "Sorry about the picnic. Already I miss what might have been. Lena."

  Attached to the note was a blue button.

  About two in the afternoon on the second day, the stationmaster shuffled past. I figured he might know something. "Any chance of a train, old friend?"

  He stopped and looked down at me. "Always a chance, but they'll have to lift the hold first."

  "What hold?"

  "Whole line is shut tight, some official party traveling around the province, so they just stopped traffic. Nothing in. Nothing out. Nothing moving."

  "And what do we do? Stay here forever?"

  "No danger of that, is there. You may lose a couple of days, but sooner or later we always get a train. What's your rush, anyway? Where do you need to get that can't wait awhile?"

  I thought it over for a minute. He took my hesitation for evasion.

  "You know where you're going? Or is it a secret? Let's see your ticket."

  I patted my pockets, looking for the paper that Kang had given me at the last moment. "This will get you on the train," he had said. "It might even get you some fruit or dried fish." I asked if it would work for a cup of tea. Kang laughed as the truck pulled away. "Plenty of tea in China," he shouted, and waved his hand. Just before the truck disappeared around the corner, his head popped up again. "Books," he yelled, "in French."

  15

  "Your grandfather used to take the train all the time from here." I looked up suddenly. The stationmaster was peering at me intently. "You don't much resemble him. Except when you're not listening."

  "Don't you have a station to supervise?"

  "See, that's what I mean. When you talk to people, your face gets official, kind of hard, but when you're staring off, like remembering someone, then your face falls into place. It's the eyes, I suppose. You have his eyes."

  What was this? Suddenly every old person I met thought I had my grandfather's eyes? "I don't know what you're talking about. How about you just tell me when a train is due?"

  He laughed and put his hand on my shoulder. "Tough guy. I remember when you were little. Just after the war. Things were dirty and confused. People milling around what was left of this station, looking for relatives, military police barking orders, Chinese everywhere, and I mean everywhere. There was one wouldn't leave my office. I told him he couldn't see the train schedules. Didn't matter how good an ally they was, the schedules belonged to us. We might not have much left, I said, but what we got is ours, and the schedule was not his business. He said troop trains were moving and transports and food, and if he didn't get the schedule, there would be a mess and I'd get shot."

  Suddenly I was interested in this old man. He was telling a story I'd heard from my grandfather a dozen times over the years. "So," I said, "you pulled a big revolver from your belt and laid it on the table."

  He was quiet a moment. "That table, your grandfather made it for me before the war."

  "It was maple, with round legs, and golden oak trim inlaid along the top."

  "That Chinaman put his boots on the table. I told him, 'Boots off the table, now, or your brains go on the floor.' "

  "What did he do?" I knew, but I wanted to hear the old man tell it.

  The stationmaster rubbed his eyes. He took off his hat and scratched his head, enjoying the memory. "The bastard told me to screw myself. Then he spat against the wall and left my office."

  "My grandfather said that table had a secret drawer."

  "It still does."

  "You have that table? Here in the station?" I wanted to touch the wood, know what my grandfather had felt as he sawed and smoothed and found the heart.

  "Why don't you come and see?" We crossed the main hall, stepping around people sleeping soundly on the floor, their packs of Chinese goods held in their arms like lovers. The stationmaster took out his key to unlock the door to his office, then stopped. The door was open. He gave me a puzzled look, stepped into the room, and groaned. There, on the table, was a fish, gasping to breathe, pinned by a knife meant to gut a goat. I pulled out the knife, and the fish flopped to the floor.

  "My table . . ." The old man's voice was dull. "All these years . . .

  ames Church

  A CORPSE IN THE KORYO

  I had that table all of these years, and now this." He looked at the knife in my hand, then at the fish. "Train's due at midnight, one o'clock more likely."

  "Can I use the phone?" He stared at me dumbly. "The phone." I shook his shoulder, not too hard. "I need to make a call."

  "Railroad connection, not for outside."

  "I know, I know, but I can use it anyway."

  He peered at me as if I were far away, or maybe he was. "That's a Military Security knife."

  "They hanging around? You seen any of them?"

  He glanced down at the fish. "Don't be here when I get back," was all he said, and then he was out the door.

  As soon as I picked up the phone, I got an operator. It was the same one I'd had in Kanggye.

  "You again," she said.

  "Get me Pyongyang."

  "How's the weather in Manpo?"

  "About to storm. Look, this is urgent."

  "Sure, I know. You guys are all alike. I thought we were going to have dinner."

  "Yeah, a good meal. Bet you know some nice places, too."

  The line was bad, but not so bad she couldn't catch my tone of voice.

&nb
sp; "Funny thing," she said. "I can lose this connection real easy. Happens all the time. Oops. I hear static. That could mean a system failure.

  My orders are to disconnect and shut down. That way we don't cascade."

  "You don't what?"

  "I don't know. That was what they told us last Saturday. One girl had to admit she'd been talking to her boyfriend, a Colonel Yun in Haeju or something, and next thing you know, wham, a cascade. Is she ever in trouble."

  I didn't say anything.

  "You're not mad at me, are you?"

  I coughed lightly.

  "Listen, I'm sorry. There is really a lot of pressure around here.

  They scream at you when you lose a connection, as if this crummy equipment can ever work two calls in a row. It's Russian, you know what I mean? Built like those old Soviet ladies. Not like those Russian girls today, so pretty. I saw one on TV the other night. They seem to be doing okay these days, if you know what I mean."

  I gave her a number.

  "That same police line."

  "I need to report a crime."

  She whooped. "From Manpo? Man, I'd never get a free minute if people reported every crime in Manpo. Hang on, here we go."

  There was a faint click, a moment of silence when I thought she had cut me off, then Pak's voice nice and calm on the other end.

  "You're late, you're absent without leave, you're missing in action, where the hell are you, and why the hell are you still on the border?"

  "More important, did you have any idea what is going on up here, before you packed me off? Military Security just sent me a message. I think it was a death threat."

  "A what?"

  "A fish with a goat knife stuck in its guts."

  "Very subtle, those guys." It was silent for a moment, and I thought we'd been disconnected. Then Pak said, "Spare me the details right now. Put a full report on my desk when you get here. You can write it on the train. You'll have plenty of time, and nothing else to do."

  "If we ever get a train. It's all locked up."

  "Some Comrade Big or another." Pak was normally more discreet than this on the phone. "Anyway, it's not your concern. Your business is here. I have a dead body, a foreigner, a Finn from the looks of it. I'll tell you when I see you, and it better be soon." A series of clicks, a dead space, then a buzz.

  The operator got back on the line. "That was a cascade."

  "Somebody's boyfriend somewhere."

  "You're not a colonel, are you?" There was a note of alarm in her voice.

  I laughed. "Not even close."

  "Dinner. Don't forget."

  There was no sense replying because the phone started buzzing and then a new, tinny voice on the other end shouted that this was railway communications equipment, reserved for railway business, it was a breach of security to use it for personal business.

  "We need a train," I barked.

  A pause, then a suspicious "Who is this?"

  "Never mind who this is, friend. Military Security says the train to Pyongyang better be here in three hours, or files start getting pulled."

  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

  FOUR

  *Ś?

  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.