by James Church
"There's too much territory for me to cover, even with the two trainees they threw at me last year when the highway started getting more traffic. I decided to do regular patrols but at irregular times. I remembered it from an old book on guerrilla tactics. We log the times and the particular run, so that theoretically we cover everything once a week. The whole point is, there's no regular pattern, which means sometimes we do the same route two days in a row. What we lose in territory, we make up for in luck. This time we were lucky. We did the route that goes by this hillock twice."
I put my boot on the stones and ground them into the dirt. "I thought we were friends, Li. We've known each other a long time.
Maybe friendship doesn't mean anything anymore." Below, a convoy of dump trucks filled with people moved to the next section of fields to harvest. They turned down a road and in a moment were out of sight. "Do you really think I'm a fool? You don't make regular runs through here, and even if you did, you'd never find anything in this corn. Two rows over could be a thousand kilometers away. So what is this about?" I motioned at the hill slightly higher and behind where we stood. "Let's go."
When we reached the top of the hill, Li squatted down peasant style and lit a cigarette. He puffed at it a few times, then pinched off the lit end and put what was left behind his ear. "You're right. Someone told me to be here. From this spot, we were watching that guy watching you.
He was no one from this side of the DMZ--too many gadgets. I'm not supposed to say anything, but I got to thinking about it. You may not believe me, but it's true."
"I didn't even know where I was going to set up that morning. How could anyone else know where I'd be?"
"We didn't, and neither did the other guy as far I can tell. Maybe they just guessed you wouldn't drive too far down the highway. This hill and the next one over are the best surveillance spots for a couple of kilometers. All the other hills are too small or too bare, and there aren't many spots to hide your car."
"They? They guessed? Who are we talking about, Li?"
Li glanced at his watch. "Don't ask me anything else. Won't be but a few minutes. Just keep your eyes down on the road."
"What am I looking for?" I knew the answer.
A car.
"What if I say I'm tired of watching highways?"
Li stood up and moved along the path down the hill. "That child, Inspector. He was my sister's son." He paused and looked up at me. "I know what happened. I think you do, too."
The sound of two cars coming out of the tunnel and moving at high speed made us both turn toward the road. The lead car, half a kilometer away and coming at us like an arrowhead, was deep blue, smaller than the one I'd seen on the first morning but just as clean. The second car was bigger, black, and right behind, so close it seemed attached to the first. I'd never seen two cars going so fast that close together.
The driver of the black car must have taken his foot off the gas. The blue car pulled ahead suddenly, and as it came abreast of us, there was a muffled explosion, the road heaved into the air, and the car careened into the field across the way. The second car braked sharply and stopped just before the crater left by the explosion. The passenger side door opened; a man got out and ran to the driver's side of the blue car. He looked in the window, pulled a small machine pistol from under his jacket, and fired a burst into the car. He looked again, then fired another. As he ran back to the black car, he stopped and looked up the hill. He had short-cropped hair. I couldn't see his eyes, but I knew they were like knives.
The black car drove on the dirt shoulder for a few yards, crushing the wildflowers. Once it eased back onto the highway, the driver accelerated so rapidly he fishtailed across the road, then regained control and moved north again. Just as the car disappeared over a small rise, I heard the horn blare. Li was shaking; I couldn't tell whether it was with fear or with anger. "He wanted you to see that, Inspector. And he wanted me to see it, too. It's a warning: If we get in his way, we're dead men, for sure."
6
"You hungry yet, Inspector?"
"It was your satellite dish, must have been. Your people were watching that highway. Or someone working for you. That radio scanner, in the black car the first time, it was yours, too?"
"Told you, I'm only a note taker. Mind if I fix a sandwich?" He walked into the kitchen and turned on the light. "Could make you a cup of tea--Irish tea, if you don't mind."
"I've had coffee already." I heard him grunt in disappointment. "Okay, I'll try the tea."
"I thought you liked tea."
"Lost my taste for it, I guess."
"Cream?"
"Cream! Are you kidding? How about whiskey? I thought that was how you people drank tea." I followed him to the kitchen.
"Some do. Not me. Cream and sugar." He turned to watch me for a moment, just long enough to make sure I'd stopped at the kitchen door.
"Only a habit, drinking tea like that, but it reminds me of home. You ever get lonely, Inspector, on the road?"
"Wouldn't you like to know. If I did, it would take a lot of loneliness for me to drink tea with cream and sugar." I took the cup from him and looked around the edge.
"No cranes, sorry."
"Tell me, Richie, why were your people watching the highway? Is that when I wandered into your sights? Were you expecting Kang to be out there?"
The Irishman cleaned the counter, washed his cup, and wiped the faucets and then the cupboard handles. "Three questions, for which you already realize you won't get answers. But you know what Kang was doing back there in Pak's office, don't you. He wanted to find out how much Kim knew. And, if Kang was operating true to form, he also wanted a good look at you. He'd been checking up, he told you that. But Kang doesn't trust paper or other people's reports. He wanted to see you for himself."
I gave a mock salute. "I am impressed. You are obviously thorough, a trait too often overlooked. You've been watching Kang awhile, I take it."
"Not long enough. We didn't know about Kim, but we knew Kang was worried. He was jumping around, moving his people and collecting his cash, folding up networks. We couldn't figure it out, until we got wind of this Japanese thing. Someone told me it looked like Kang was scared.
Didn't sound right to me."
"Kang wouldn't panic. He lacked that gene. Up in Manpo, he told me the deal with Japan was about to cause trouble internally. Do you know what he meant? Had you already figured out what he was doing on the border?"
"Let's just say we knew that a settlement between your country and Japan after all these years strikes a lot of people as inconvenient."
"They shouldn't worry."
"Oh?"
"Richie, compared with relations between my country and Japan, the Irish have a love affair with England. South Koreans, Chinese, Indonesians--no one likes the Japanese and no one ever will. I don't know why. Pak and I would talk about it sometimes. Pak said it was irrational."
"What happened to Pak? You said he's dead. How?"
"Ask Kim."
"Be serious." His phone rang; he answered it quickly. "I think so." He hung up. "You want to keep going?" He looked at his notebook, then frowned at the tape recorder. It had been running the whole time. "You had just seen a couple of cars."
7
"Military Security mined the highway." I had run up the stairs and was out of breath, standing in the doorway to Pak's office. "They blew up a car, and Kim shot the driver in cold blood. He must have told Li to bring me out there to watch. The guy's a fucking sadist." Pak was looking at me curiously from behind his desk. I never run up the stairs.
"This is Kang's business, not ours. Remember, I told you this wasn't my job, I told you when this whole thing started. It has something to do with that black car I was supposed to photograph. This time it was blue. Get Kang on the phone."
"Let's go to your office, Inspector." He looked out his window at the Operations Building. "The view is better."
When we got to my office, Pak pointed at my desk. "Inspector,
sit down, shut up, and listen to yourself. Call Kang? You want me to use the telephone in the middle of this?" He picked up my phone and yanked the wire from the wall. If the phones were bugged, they would transmit even when they were hung up. We unplugged them from the wall receptacle on the rare occasions we didn't want to risk being monitored.
Yanking the wire from the wall was not the preferred method, but it did the job. "That's much better."
"What's wrong with your office?"
"I think someone is keeping an eye on us, and maybe an ear, from the Operations Building. I just noticed it a day or so ago. Curtains moving in odd ways."
"They've been watching me, too."
"Kang and I are having lunch today, remember? You can join us.
Make jolly at the noodle place. Lots of laughs. Afterward, we can go up to the monuments by the river to talk. A couple of drunken cadre going to snooze on the grass. They can't get in too close, unless they've decided it's time to throw a net on us."
"This is no time for a picnic. Something is about to happen, and for all I know it's going to happen today. You already know what it is, don't you? You knew even before you sent me up to Manpo."
"I don't know what I don't know, Inspector." Pak was staring out my window. "Do you think Li really understands what is going on?" He didn't sound like he was interested in the answer; his attention was still completely riveted on the street.
"He must have. He looked at his watch; he knew the schedule. I think he's known for a long time something was going on. They had to bring the local security man in on it, at least enough to make sure the road was clear each time one of those cars came up the road. Something happened last month, though. Too many cars, on the wrong days. Li is quiet, but he's smart. He must have figured it out. Maybe he said something to Kim. Maybe he told Kim to find another highway, it was too dangerous for the locals. To keep him quiet, they killed his sister's son."
Pak whirled around. "The boy who had his throat cut?" He closed his eyes and put his hand on the wall to steady himself. "Enough," he said softly, and turned back to the window. "Enough."
"I don't think Li knew exactly what was going to happen when he told me to come out there. He seemed nervous, not like himself, but that could have been because he was planning to tell me something he had been told to keep secret. And he knew what happens when you cross Military Security. But they overreached if they thought they'd keep him quiet by killing the boy." I waited for Pak to say something, but he didn't. "You alright?" I asked.
"Fine, Inspector. Keep talking."
"After he saw what Kim did, when Kim stopped and looked up the hill, he said to me that Kim was warning us not to get in the way or we'd be dead men."
Pak kept staring out the window. "He didn't say, 'I'm a dead man.'
He said, 'We.' Why include you? Why does Kim think you're getting in his way?"
I shrugged. "Does it matter?"
"Okay." Pak finally convinced himself there was nothing happening outside. "We're clear at the moment." He moved back slowly from the window and leaned against my desk. "You're right. We may not have much time before they get here. We need to lay out what we know and see what we can figure out. It doesn't all have to fit, just enough to put them off balance for a few more hours. If they think we've filed a report implicating them, it will send them back to their cave while they figure out their next move. That's long enough for me to call the Minister."
"Why not call the Minister right now?"
"And tell him what? We're scared? I need something concrete for him to issue an order throwing the Ministry in front of Military Security."
"You
want to start with the black car I couldn't get a picture of?"
"No, I'll take your explanation of the cars. Where does the corpse in the Koryo come into this?"
"At this point, the only connection is Hyangsan."
"Meaning? And I don't want to hear about teeny-weeny pine cones, either."
"I played your game of Continents with the guide at the temple at Hyangsan. She said all the continents had been there. We got a good enough reconstruction of the hotel records. Three Americans and a Chinese tour group on the third floor, four people--technicians of some sort--from Brazil on the sixth. A couple of Australian businessmen and an African cultural troupe were on the seventh. They had a small riot in the upstairs bar over one of the hostesses. Next morning, they all made up and everyone went on a tour of the temple."
"No Europeans?"
"Only one. A male. Partial registration was on the computer. Paper copies with signatures and passport notation are gone, but I found a night note from the floor lady. Eighth floor. The man had the room on the end of the corridor, came back real late with a couple of other people.
Very drunk, could barely walk. I showed a picture of the corpse to the temple guide. She nodded."
Pak slammed his fist onto my desk. "There must be more records.
Someone made a reservation for him at the hotel, he checked in somewhere, he checked out of somewhere, he took a plane or a train into here, crossed a border. Why are there no traces of this character?"
I pulled out my notes from Hyangsan. "The local guy up there, what's his name, the one with the golden voice."
Song.
"Song told me girls came up when a Politburo nephew was there.
His exact words were, 'Very discreet, one in each car.' "
"Prostitution? Why would anyone try to blow up a car on the main highway over that?"
"Not girls." I looked up at the molding along the ceiling and wondered if I'd ever get to it at this rate. "Not girls. Cars. They're smuggling cars, from someplace south, up to Hyangsan, then to Manpo, and then into China. They sell them at a profit, a big profit because they get around the Chinese import duties. One car may not be worth all that much, but if you do it several times a month, over the course of a year or two, it would be worth a bundle."
I took a piece of wood from the top drawer of my desk. I smoothed it between my fingers; it was oak. Good, friendly, strong, reliable oak.
Pak shook his head. "If we were in the Sahara, you'd be worthless, completely worthless. Can't keep that badge on to save your life, but always got a piece of wood nearby." He sighed. "Keep going. It's cars. Not girls."
"It's cars, but it's not just cars. Song told me that Military Security was involved in this smuggling operation. I didn't believe him at first.
Now I do. Remember when Kang and I met for a beer at the Koryo? He wanted me to think Military Security was trying to set him up that morning I missed taking the picture of the black car. Only I don't think they were trying to set him up. I think Kang has his own smuggling operation going. He and Kim are both running cars to China, but for different reasons, and they're stumbling over each other."
"Kim wouldn't like anyone cutting into his profits, especially the Investigations Department. But this can't just be about money."
"Kim must have made plenty already if he started this a few years ago. And for all the political crap they feed us at the Saturday study sessions, one thing they have right: having money makes you greedy for more. There's no sense in getting killed over money, though. They could just carve up the operation, agree to move on alternate weeks or something."
"Impossible. Kim hates Kang's guts. And if Kang is running cars, like you said, then it's not for the money, not for himself, anyway."
"Song also told me South Korean intelligence money is greasing things."
"Maybe, but if it is, only Kim is taking it. Kang wouldn't do that.
I'm telling you, I know he wouldn't."
"Alright, tell me Kang didn't want me up on the border to protect a car-smuggling operation." Pak's face didn't reveal anything; he had closed his eyes. "Maybe the Finn was a bagman." I was thinking out loud. "He must have been on Kang's payroll. That's why there isn't any trace of him. Maybe Military Security found out and killed him. You think I'm crazy? There's a link. Kang is up to something in Finland. He told
me so himself. If you ask me, he's trying to use us. He's trying to put us between himself and Military Security, have them stop for fresh meat while he gets a step ahead of them. You trust him, fine. I don't. I don't know him, and I don't trust him. Don't forget, I was standing on that hill next to Li after that car got shot up. I was standing there when Kim looked up the hill to make sure I had seen the whole thing."
"Kang has operations all over, that's his job. Don't worry about Kang's motives. He's okay." Pak opened his eyes. "I'd bet my life on it,"
He turned back to the window. "Car outside. Two cars, actually.
What's our next move?"
I walked over to my filing cabinet, pulled out a pine dowel, and threw it to Pak. "Start sanding."
8
Pak wasn't paying much attention to what he was doing. Though his hands were moving the sandpaper over the wood, all of his energy was in listening for the sound of two people, maybe three, coming up the stairs. After a while, he put down the wood. "Buy a bookcase. Save yourself a lot of time." From below, a car door slammed, the sound echoed in the courtyard. Pak and I looked at each other. His face had gone a little pale. "In a minute or so, they'll knock on the door," he said.
"They always knock. So polite all of a sudden, like lowering your voice during an interrogation: We're all gentleman, aren't we now, let's just go quietly, no fussing, down the stairs, into the car, care for a blindfold, glass of water, anything we can get for you?"
I shook my head. It wasn't like Pak to get so nervous. "Only one car door slammed. No one's coming up here. Maybe the guy got a leg cramp, sitting there all the time. You ever get cramps during a surveillance?" I started sanding again. "Relax, or you'll get the wood all riled up."
The knock on the door was like the crack of a rifle. The sound tumbled down the hall; then I couldn't hear anything but Pak's breathing.
Pak stood up slowly and nodded to me as he walked out into the hall.
