Bamboo and Blood

by James Church

  “This isn’t an interrogation, Inspector.” He stood up. “I’m simply curious, and I thought you would find it a novel experience to answer a harmless question.” I pretended not to notice that he had put his hand in his pocket. Dogs do that sometimes, look away when they’re interested. “Your friend, the one who arrived yesterday, is in the morgue. He has a broken neck. Someone has to identify him, and your mission refuses to do it. I thought you might do the honors, seeing as how you were in a bar with him yesterday.” He held out half a roll. “Please, be my guest.”

  That explained why Sohn didn’t make the appointment at the Sunflower. The question was, when did he send me that note? Or did he send it at all? “When did you find the body?”

  “I can’t very well cooperate with you, Inspector, if you don’t cooperate with me.”

  “I don’t need your cooperation.”

  “Yes, you do. If you don’t want to end up like him.”

  “You going to break my neck?”

  M. Beret looked offended. “No, but there is someone in the neighborhood who doesn’t like you, that’s the impression we’re getting.” He paused. “Don’t ask me how I know.” He paused again. “I don’t want anything to happen to you, not here. Having one of you in the freezer is enough.”

  “He had plenty of enemies.”

  “Then we’ll have to make a list, won’t we? I’ll find a thick pad of paper.” He dropped both halves of the roll in my lap. “Two o’clock, I’ll be at the bar, the one where you met him. If you hurry, you can make the start of the morning negotiating session. It’s at your mission this time, is it not? Don’t worry, you won’t have an afternoon session today.”

  Chapter Two

  The morning session of the talks went nowhere, though there was a testy exchange that kept everyone awake as long as it lasted. The afternoon session was canceled; somehow, I wasn’t surprised.

  When I opened the door to the Sunflower a little after two o’clock, the man behind the bar was watching a small television on the counter next to the cash register. He looked up from the soccer game that filled the little screen with little figures running aimlessly. He frowned at me. I frowned back. Like I’d told the Mossad over dinner, I don’t like soccer that much. They probably had already put that in my file. The man glanced at his watch, shook his head, and then pointed to an alcove in the back. M. Beret was there arranging a number of photographs on the table in front of him.

  “Ah, Inspector. I knew you would make it.” He pointed to the photographs. “Nothing out of the ordinary. Just an effort to connect names with faces, faces with places, that sort of thing. I’m sure you do it all the time.”

  There were twelve pictures, arranged in four rows of three each. The first three rows each had one clear photograph of a face; the other two were grainy or taken by cameras with fixed shutter speeds—and from a considerable distance. The last row was all landscape shots.

  “We’re going to do this in a certain order. All you have to say is yes or no to what I ask. Don’t jump ahead; don’t assume you know what I’m going to ask. Shall we begin?”

  “I don’t see a photo here of Sohn. I thought that’s what you wanted me to do, identify him.”

  “Already! I make things simple, and you make them complicated.” He took a deep breath. “Again, I’ll go over the procedure again.”

  “‘Don’t jump ahead.’ I heard you the first time.”

  The man from behind the bar appeared. He and M. Beret had a brief conversation in French, in raised voices. They both looked at me. M. Beret took out his wallet and handed some money to the man, who a moment later returned with a bottle of wine, two glasses, and a small plate of cheese. There was no room on the table, so he put everything on the seat of a chair, puffed out his cheeks, and left.

  “Let’s get the pictures out of the way first, then we can sit.” M. Beret picked up the bottle and read the label. “No hurry, actually; this won’t be ready to drink for another year or so.”

  “I’m supposed to wait until you ask me a question.”

  “Good. Top row, picture on the right end. Taken at night?”

  I leaned over and studied the photo. “No.” It might have been, for all I knew. I just wanted to get this over with.

  “Excellent. Simple answer. Continue in that vein, if you please. How about the one just below it?”

  That one was taken at a distance, maybe at dusk. Two men faced the camera, although they had their heads down as if they were talking quietly. One of them was short and had sharply chiseled features; you could see that much because of the angle of the shot. In the dying light, it was hard to tell, but he seemed to have a dark complexion. I couldn’t see anything of the man standing next to him. Both had on short-sleeve shirts. There were palm trees in the background. If I had to guess, I would have said it was taken somewhere tropical, but the question hadn’t been where but when. I don’t volunteer information unless I’m going to get something in return. There was nothing in this for me, except to find out what happened to Sohn. “You mean was it taken at night?”

  “Yes.”

  “No. Twilight, maybe.” By now I knew he didn’t care when the photographs were taken, and he probably didn’t care what answer I gave. He was just warming up the machinery.

  M. Beret put his hands behind his back and stood on tiptoe as he leaned over the table. “Now, I want you to listen closely. Do you recognize anything in the third row of pictures? Look at them closely before you answer.”

  “Third row?”

  “Yes.”

  “Third row from the top?”

  “Inspector …”

  I didn’t recognize anything in the third row, but the middle picture in the second row was of my brother meeting with the short, dark man. My brother had on a hat, something stylish and worn at just the right angle. I didn’t know he wore hats. From a distance, this one might make him look taller, but it didn’t change his face. He looked angry, which didn’t surprise me. From what little background was visible, it appeared they were in Europe, and fairly recently. I couldn’t see any loaves of bread.

  The last picture in the second row was of the facility in Pakistan where the Man with Three Fingers and I had botched the operation during those few minutes a lifetime ago. I had forgotten a lot of things in the meantime, but I still remembered the layout of the facility and the target building, and especially that one room, by heart. In the picture, the door was open; it hadn’t been that night. The photo must have been old. All of the trees looked smaller, younger than they had been when I was there. What the hell was M. Beret doing with that picture? “No,” I said finally. “I don’t recognize anything.”

  “Not even the first picture, the one of the individual?”

  I shook my head. “In the third row?” I hadn’t focused on that one before. “No.”

  “That’s Sohn when he was younger. He’s changed a bit, may have had some sort of operation. I think he may have gone by another name in those days.”

  “Doesn’t look anything like him.” There was nothing wrong with the lighting or the focus. It was a good ID picture, a little old, with some of that yellow-brown that colors old pictures, but it just wasn’t Sohn. The ears were too big.

  “You’re sure. Quite sure.”

  “If this is the person with the broken neck, I’m not going to be able to identify him for you, because I don’t know who he is.”

  “Positive?”

  I picked up the photograph and looked at it closely. For a moment, in the flickering light of the Sunflower’s back room, it looked a lot like Pak might have appeared twenty-five years ago. “I don’t know who it is. But now you have my fingerprints. Also, I suppose, my DNA. Would you like a blood sample? I could pee in a cup, if you want.”

  M. Beret took the photograph from me, collected the others, and put them all in a brown envelope. “I don’t need your fingerprints.” He moved the wineglasses onto the table. “I already have plenty. Blood samples are someone else’s
business. Perhaps you should visit the Red Cross headquarters, up the hill. Cheese?” I shook my head. “You must acquire a taste for cheese, Inspector. It will open up a whole new world for you.”

  “If it is anything like this one, I don’t need it.” I took three big swallows from the glass he handed me. “Do you have any other questions? Or am I free to go?” No sense hanging around; I don’t like white wine.

  “Have you ever broken anyone’s neck, Inspector?”

  “You surely don’t think I killed Sohn, or whoever is in your morgue, do you?”

  M. Beret took a sip from his glass. “I think many things, but I manage to winnow out most of what is untrue. You’re sure you won’t try some cheese? This here”—he pointed to a square piece covered with what could have been mold—“it’s very good. Or this.” He sliced off a small piece. “Goat cheese. Why don’t you try some?”

  “Excuse me, but when we first met, didn’t you say that you are head of counterintelligence?”

  “Not when we first met. I never do that on a first date. At some point, though, I may have mentioned something along those lines. It never hurts for the target to know whom he is talking to. What of it?”

  “Why are you investigating a murder? That isn’t counterintelligence business. Don’t you have police for that?”

  “Usually yes, but in this case no. The police have registered their firm position that this case is odd and not something they want to touch. The exact wording to me over the phone was, ‘It stinks.’”

  “I salute them, a police force with good judgment.”

  “Was Sohn a friend of yours?” You could almost hear the question snap into place. Nice technique, I thought, but the delivery was a little flat-footed.

  “Friend? People here seem to use the word loosely. Where I come from, it’s not a term to be tossed around. Sohn was an acquaintance, someone I’d barely met; not even a colleague, really. I wouldn’t say I considered him a friend.”

  “Does it bother you that he is dead?”

  Odd question. “Should it?” Very odd.

  “I’m going to tell you something, Inspector, because I don’t give a damn if you know, and maybe it will help you realize that you are about to be caught in a hurricane that will be so destructive it will probably blow your little country apart. Where it will toss you I do not know. Nor do I care.”

  “We’re clear on one thing, anyway.” Pak spoke to me of winds from odd places. M. Beret spoke of hurricanes. Maybe that was one of the differences between them and us.

  “Sohn had been here before.” M. Beret paused, but as I did not respond, went on. “He struck me as an intelligent man from what I saw, a bit nervous at times, and a tedious way of sitting for long periods at cafés, nursing a cup of coffee, staring at nothing.”

  “So far, if there is a hurricane coming, I don’t even feel a breeze.”

  “He was here several times. He met Jenö. I know for sure he did that at least once.”

  “At least once? Such careful phrasing holds so many wonderful possibilities. To which conclusion would you like me to jump? Or am I free to choose on my own?” So, as soon as Sohn arrived, they already knew who he was. They were probably on him from the moment he got off the plane and entered the air terminal. More than that, they would know perfectly well if it was his body in their morgue. “Don’t tell me you’re unsure about something like how many times Sohn met someone as interesting as Jenö. I thought you and your teams were everywhere.” Over the lamb dinner, or maybe it was over the discussion of prunes, Mossad had told me about their exchanges with Sohn. M. Beret knew as much as I did about Sohn and Jenö; in fact, he probably knew a lot more. But he didn’t seem to know for sure how much I knew. Maybe he didn’t know for sure how much Jenö had told me. That suggested Jenö might be working for M. Beret, and with him, and against him all at the same time.

  “Funny story, you might recognize the outlines. The two of them disappeared one evening, and then reappeared hours later. We spotted them separately, about the same time in the same part of town, near a nightclub. Sohn was nursing a bruised shoulder when I saw him next. I think he may have jumped out of a moving car. It’s not something your people do very well.”

  “No garbage truck?”

  M. Beret poured some more wine into my glass. “I don’t know why, exactly, but I’m trying to help you.”

  “One minute you don’t care if a hurricane blows me away. The next minute you’re trying to help me.”

  “You are a smart man, Inspector.”

  “But what?”

  “Are you so sure there is something else to that thought? Don’t you take compliments, unqualified?”

  “But what? M. Beret, no one begins or ends a sentence like that unless he has something else to say.”

  Silence for a moment. I could see he was deciding whether to let me be right or to prove me wrong.

  “Very well,” he said at last. “You are a smart man, so why do you stay?”

  “Go on.”

  “That’s it. That’s all. Fin.”

  “No, it’s not. It might be all in some other place, under other circumstances. Not here, and not from you. Please continue, M. Beret.”

  He sighed. “Very well. You stay, that is, you won’t leave because you are a patriot, I suppose.”

  “One supposes.”

  “Why else?” I didn’t reply. “Well, then,” he went on, “if it were possible to do something, would you? Wouldn’t you get out of the way of a hurricane if you could? Wouldn’t you help warn other people?”

  “Go on.”

  “How bad do things have to get, Inspector?”

  “We are back to ‘you are a smart man,’ aren’t we?”

  “No, I misspoke. I think you are a man of morality.”

  “No longer smart?”

  “You cannot keep dodging the point. Yes, you know it, Inspector. You cannot come outside and go back exactly the same, ever again. Nothing can look the same when you go home. Especially now.”

  “But I will go home.”

  “Yes, we’ve established that, haven’t we? And once there, once you get back, what then? How will you pull up the mental drawbridge and lock it tight? Are you going to forget everything you’ve learned about the rest of the world? Empty your brain as you step across the border?”

  “I can only do what I can.”

  He took off his beret. Without it, he looked older, but he seemed to feel less constrained. “Compromise with evil is an awful thing, Inspector.”

  “Do you know, M. Beret”—I hesitated because I knew that wasn’t his name and it seemed wrong to call him that at this moment—“but surely you must, that the starkest moral positions are the easiest to state? Truth to be palatable cannot sit in a complex sentence. Truth must be simple, don’t you agree? It must be something that does not need to be chewed. It should simply slip down the throat. ‘Do not compromise with evil.’ Simple, easy to remember, even easier to say. Tell me, is there a tattoo parlor nearby? It wouldn’t be too painful, would it? We could put it on your wrist, perhaps.”

  “My wrist?”

  “Oh, I’ve read my history, M. Beret.” I didn’t give a damn what his name was anymore. Sohn was in their morgue, and they were using that as their opening to get to me. They’d have spent the past week arguing how to do it, watching for an opportunity, comparing notes on where I went, what I ate, whether I looked at the sky in the morning, trying to figure out who I was. Go slow and sideways, that’s what they’d concluded. Work his mind, find the intellectual buttons. He doesn’t like Portuguese boys, so that’s out. What’s left? Maybe talk to him about morality and evil, that sort of thing. Nothing too direct, just enough to provoke him. Make him mad, confuse him, throw a little dust on his internal compass. What kind of idiot did they take me for? “I’m quite clear on the subject, as I’m sure your countrymen have always been. Compromise with evil, or just keep it over the border. Very tidy, except for the people you turn away.”

 
He put the beret back on his head. “Sohn had eyes for Ahmet’s daughter. More than eyes, actually.”

  They really did want to provoke me. I buttoned everything down, went right down the checklist of emotions and buttoned each one down. “I can imagine a long line of men with eyes for Ahmet’s daughter, M. Beret. A few might even be Swiss, am I right?”

  “She can charm the pants off of anyone she chooses. I would be very careful, were I you.” No, being careful with Dilara was out of the question. But it didn’t matter.