Bamboo and Blood

by James Church

  “Were you me, M. Beret, you would have a headache from the wine. You’re right. It’s too young.”

  He put his hands together and sighed deeply. “I need your help, Inspector, if that isn’t too blunt. The police have warned me that they are not going to investigate the case until they have assurances that they will receive full cooperation from your mission. Although technically your mission falls under the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, your ambassador doesn’t seem to bother much with diplomacy and so the entire matter has, as the Americans like to say, fallen into my lap. I want to get rid of it, and for that, I need your help.”

  Helping the chief of Swiss counterintelligence was not wise, nor was it healthy. Swallowing razor blades was higher on the list of things I would consider. Still, the man seemed to know something about Sohn and his dealings with Jenö; he seemed to be working against whatever my brother was doing, and so far he had not done anything to me other than get under my skin, which was his job.

  “Sohn and the ambassador didn’t get along,” I said. “I don’t know why. I doubt very much that the ambassador killed him, though. You may think we are a little crude in our ways, M. Beret, but murder is not normally part of the routine. That’s about all I can tell you, because it’s everything I know.”

  “Really? You must know something more about Sohn. Don’t tell me you were simply overjoyed to run across a compatriot in a foreign city. Overjoyed compatriots don’t follow each other according to prearranged patterns.”

  I had to laugh. “I should have realized that people who kept such close track of their soap would be very observant about everything else. Everything and nothing. Because on this one, you’ll have to brace yourself for disappointment. I really didn’t know him. In case you haven’t received the report yet, I did go to see the dungeon at Chillon the other day, and if you want to throw me in there you can. It would be pleasant to sit in one of those cells this summer and listen to the waves against the stone foundations. No matter what you say or how much you turn on your Swiss charm, I can’t tell you any more about Sohn, because I don’t know anything about him, nothing that you apparently don’t already have in your files. In fact you probably know a great deal more about him than I do. I’ll bet you have hollowed out an entire mountain to hold all the paper. Surely you must have other people you can ask. It seems to me that you have multiple sources, all the way to New York.”

  “I don’t trust them. I never trust them. Besides, that’s not exactly the question, is it, Inspector? I’m not asking about his patrimony. I’m not asking you for background, for his gymnasium report card. I want to know why he arrived here yesterday, and why you met him.”

  “You say he was here several times before. Apparently he liked the place, though I must tell you, I can’t imagine why.”

  M. Beret pointed to the plate of cheese.

  2

  “You Chinese breed like monkeys, is what I hear.”

  I looked stoically out at the gray waters of the lake. After leaving M. Beret at the Sunflower, I’d walked to the lake to sit and be alone. Some things are not fated, even if you do your best. I did my best to ignore the woman; some people give up and go away if you pretend to ignore them. It also sometimes works if you indicate that you do not understand the language.

  “Rabbits, not monkeys, that’s what I meant.” The woman sat down and took off her gloves. She seemed not to notice I wasn’t responding. “It must be difficult for you here. Not much familiar to eat. God knows, we eat the normal things. I’ll bet you wish you had something to remind you of home. I heard there are a lot of Chinese restaurants on Quai du Mont-Blanc. I wouldn’t know, but you might try one of them.”

  “I think you are mistaken.” I still didn’t look at her. Maybe she’d think I was meditating in the fading afternoon light.

  “No, they’re over there.” She pointed across the lake, her finger in front of my nose. “Of course, I’ve never tried one, myself. I don’t eat that sort of food.” She didn’t stop to explain or pause before going on to the next subject. I’d met people like her before. Ideas seemed to take control of their brains in rapid-fire order. It was not good for work that required plodding persistence. But it must be good for something, maybe a survival trait, assuming it wasn’t simply a loose connection. “Most Chinese girls that I’ve seen are okay. But a few are ugly. I’m sorry to say that, it seems unkind, but I guess if you’ve got a billion people, you’re bound to get some real dogs. You ever eat dog? I don’t think I could.”

  “I’m not Chinese.” I finally turned to look at her. Her hands were pretty, long tapered fingers. She probably played Rachmaninoff on the piano, but I wasn’t going to start a conversation on anything with her, certainly not about composers. Who knew where it would lead. I only wanted her to go away.

  “Not Chinese? You could have fooled me.” When I didn’t reply, she tried again. “Japanese?”

  “In the Orient, you are granted three guesses. You have only one guess left.” She seemed to crave mystery.

  “Mongolian,” she said and closely examined my face. “I wouldn’t have thought so; you don’t have those cheekbones they have. Marvelous cheekbones. Well, no matter, it’s good to see Mongolians getting out and about again. I haven’t seen one in years and years. Perhaps it has something to do with the food, do you think? We have lamb in some of the restaurants, you know, though we probably prepare it differently. I hope you won’t take offense at my thinking you are Chinese.” She smiled and bowed slightly, as she had no doubt seen in the movies. “Mongolians are herders, isn’t that right? I heard it is thanks to the Mongols that we invented croissants, though I cannot remember exactly why. Perhaps you’re familiar with the story. I imagine it is taught in your schools.”

  “No, we have no schools. Herders have no need of education. We know only the wind in the grass and the warmth of mare’s milk. We use women like cattle. Good day to you.” I stood up and gave her what I imagined might be a herdsman’s leer.

  Chapter Three

  “Somebody, surely, somebody stayed awake all the way through their presentation and took notes.” The delegation head looked around the table. “If we don’t have any notes, we can’t send a report back. And if we don’t send a report, there will be a nasty telegram tomorrow from the ministry. I don’t like nasty telegrams on a Saturday.”

  The room was silent.

  “The rule has always been that the youngest one, no matter what, fills that job. Miss Ho?”

  “I got most of it.”

  “Most isn’t all. What was the problem?”

  “He was reading out loud from that document. He droned on and on. If he’d done it this morning, I might have been able to keep conscious the whole time, but after lunch …”

  “Nobody else? What about you, Paek?”

  “Paek was sound asleep,” someone muttered.

  “I got a good part of his opening remarks.” Mr. Paek was an elderly man with a dignified bearing and doleful eyes. “But then I lost him. I think my hearing failed. I don’t think I’ve ever been so bored. It was making me deaf.”

  They all laughed. “Well, patch together what you can and fill in the rest as needed.” The delegation head took off his glasses. “I want the cable ready to go out before dinner. The ambassador will insist on seeing it. He’s not in a good mood, and I don’t want to give him any excuse to chew me out. What about you?” He turned to me. “What are your thoughts on what went on today?”

  I didn’t have any thoughts, at least not on today’s proceedings. I was still thinking about yesterday and the morgue. I’d gone there not long after leaving the woman on the bench; she’d probably gone home and slept fitfully, dreaming of Mongolian herdsmen riding croissants, thundering across the steppes to attack the citadels of the West. M. Beret had let me in the back door of an old building, escorted me down dark corridors, and led me finally into a room with a single ceiling lamp hanging from a long cord. I didn’t need more light than that to tell it was So
hn. For some reason, I was glad he was in a place with worn wooden floors.

  “And what did you observe?”

  “Observe?” I thought about it for a moment, until I realized the delegation leader wasn’t asking me about Sohn’s body. “Diplomatic fencing isn’t exactly my specialty.”

  “Really, I would have thought human nature was something the police would follow very closely.”

  “It is, only we deal with people in a more natural habitat than this. We don’t have to cope with quite so much honey on the lies.”

  “True, there is a lot of that. We honey the lies, and poison the truth. Odd, isn’t it?” He idly flipped through his small notebook. “There isn’t anything in here, did you know that, Inspector? I take it out and look through it when the other side starts trying to bully me. They think it has instructions in it. I select a page, remove my glasses and squint intently at this little piece of blank paper. They’re not sure if I’m listening. Half the time it make them nervous. The other half, they get huffy. Once in a while, they even stop talking until I close the notebook and look up. Sometimes they’re like young children, very self-important.”

  “Maybe you haven’t frightened them enough.”

  “Ah, then it is true you subscribe to the position that these talks should resemble head-to-head combat, fiery speeches and table pounding? We’ve had some discussion among ourselves on where you stand on this question of tactics.”

  “Maybe a little table pounding wouldn’t hurt.”

  “In a police interrogation, it might be perfectly well advised. Here, it must be like a rare spice—sprinkled into the pot once in a while, and then only a tiny bit at a time. If you use too much all at once, it ruins the flavor. And worse, when you need it next, there will be nothing left. At the end of the day, when we finally pack our bags, I’m supposed to get nowhere on missiles but come home with food from these people, Inspector. Food, boatloads of it. If I pound the table, what will it get me?

  “And if they think we are weak, what will it get you?”

  “Very good. Some people have that talent, pointing to the dilemma at hand. Would that they had the same talent for finding solutions. The dilemma is exactly as you describe, Inspector. If it were a wild boar, you would have shot it between the eyes. What next? We have identified our dilemma with precision, with superb intellectual acumen, with a political sense of balance and a depth of understanding beyond anything seen in history. We are brilliant. What next? No one has given me an answer to that. All I receive is competing and contradictory sets of instructions on alternate weeks. If you know the answer, I’m happy to listen. I’ll fill this little notebook with page after page of your ideas. I’ll buy another notebook. I’ll buy two. Pencils galore. But meanwhile, meanwhile, I have to proceed the best way I know how.”

  No one seemed to know that a senior party official was in the Geneva morgue with a broken neck. There were no odd silences, no one hurrying down the hall holding specially marked envelopes, no worried looks. The security man, who should have been shitting bricks, seemed perfectly calm. The ambassador passed me as he turned the corner into his office. The frown he gave me was normal in all respects. Maybe the Swiss hadn’t said anything to anybody yet. Even the ambassador didn’t know, unless he’d known all along.

  2

  “We’re going to meet, Inspector.” Most people might have said hello or feigned surprise at running into me, even though they had plotted the point where our paths would cross with great care. I was walking along the lake after the talks ended that afternoon. I could have turned right, but instead I was heading up toward the lady with the rump. I was getting too predictable. Jenö was waiting for me.

  “We’re going to meet, as opposed to what we are doing at the moment?” I didn’t break stride when he stepped out from behind one of the butchered plane trees.

  “This is just talk, passing the time. There must be three extra sets of eyes watching us.”

  “What makes you think they won’t be doing the same the next time we meet?”

  “Because we’ll be somewhere other than where they imagine.”

  “I’m not going to get knocked out by Ahmet again.”

  “In this case, it will do no good if you are unconscious. Do you like pastry? I thought some Asians were not partial to bread.”

  Bread seemed to be on people’s minds these days. Sohn especially had been interested when I told him what my brother had said on the phone. “Bread is fine,” I said to Jenö, “as long as it’s leavened.”

  “Good for you. You’ve been looking at an encyclopedia. How about you decide to get some pastry. Tomorrow, say about ten o’clock in the morning.”

  “How about after ten? I’m late rising these days.”

  “No, ten o’clock, on the dot, on the button. Tomorrow, you’ll do everything on the button.”

  “Says who?”

  “I know. You don’t work for me. But you did work for Sohn.”

  “Wrong again.” Jenö knew Sohn was dead. Why was I not surprised?

  “Was I or was I not in your Hotel Koryo a few months ago, in the middle of winter, Inspector? Did Sohn not long afterward select you for this mission to Geneva? Are those all coincidence? Or are they beads in a wonderful necklace suggesting an elegant purpose and design?”

  “I don’t wear jewelry, of any description.” Neither did Sohn, as far as I knew.

  “In this case, I expect you to be where I tell you, at ten o’clock, with bells on. You’ll love the pastry. What can it hurt?”

  “And where is this best place for pastry?”

  “On your side of the lake. Not too far from your mission.”

  “I’m not happy to hear that.”

  “Walk into town. Near Place du Pont there will be a cab with tinted windows driven by an Arab, a friend. Get in at nine fifty. Tell him you are looking for a good croissant.”

  “And he will reply?”

  “He will glower at you in the rearview mirror. Ignore that. He’s moody, but reliable. He’ll take you up into the hills. Again, I’m reminding you, the place you’re going is not far from your mission. Don’t worry, your people never go up there. Never. This I know. It’s in a section called Cologny. Very posh. The driver will drop you about twenty meters away from a fork in the road. The patisserie sits just there, aloof and alone. Go in and say politely to the nice lady you want two croissants.”

  “In French?”

  “Don’t bother. Tell her you want them to go. Nodding in a not unfriendly manner, she should ask: au beurre ou ordinaire? Never mind the translation. Just hold up one finger on each hand, thusly.” Jenö demonstrated, using his two pinkie fingers. “However, if she tells you gruffly that the bakery has run out of dough for the weekend, it means everything is off. That is unlikely, but if it happens, leave quickly. Get back to the cab. If you don’t have a bag of croissants, the driver will take off like a bat out of hell. There isn’t another driver on earth that will be able to follow him. Once we figure out what went wrong, he’ll drop you back in town. I’ll be in touch, and life will resume its normal joyful rhythms.”

  “What if the nice lady says they don’t have any croissants, but I see something else I like?”

  “It will be the last thing you ever eat. If she says she has nothing, get out of there in a hurry. But I don’t think anything will go wrong.”

  “Of course not.”

  “If we’re on schedule, she’ll put two in a bag for you.”

  “How much?”

  Jenö handed me a fifty-franc note.

  “I suppose now everyone has a picture of you passing me money.”

  “Fifty francs? We don’t take pictures of anything less than a hundred. Don’t be so suspicious.”

  “Oh ho!”

  “You’ll walk out with the croissants.”

  “How about a brioche?”

  He handed over another fifty-franc note. “Now you are screwed.”

  I pocketed the money and smiled into the middle
distance. “I don’t like surveillance photos where the people are frowning, do you?”

  “Walk out with the damned pastries and go back to the cab. Once you’re inside, open the bag. There will be a note inside.”

  “A note! In a croissant? Something like a Chinese fortune croissant? This note, I suppose it will have instructions for the driver?”

  “It might.”

  “It tells him where to take me next.”

  “Possibly.”

  “I’m to arrive at the next place at ten fifteen sharp. You want me on the bench closest to the Villa Diodati?”

  “What?”

  “Obviously, you want me at Le Pre Byron. It’s the best place to meet around there, out in the open. You think you’re the only one who has scouted meeting sites?”