A Corpse in the Koryo

by James Church

  “Is that an Irish compliment?”

  “No. The one thing I remember from the briefings is that Koreans don’t like foreigners. Don’t get excited. It wasn’t meant as a criticism, just a statement of fact. Like saying cow shit smells.”

  “What makes you think I like you?”

  “Good, you don’t, then. I hate it when the briefers are wrong.”

  “It’s not that we don’t like foreigners. It’s not foreigners, it’s ourselves we don’t like. In our minds, we are small, quivering, bowing, submissive, beaten, cowering dogs. If we like foreigners, it can only be because we are afraid, or currying favor, or kissing their feet.”

  The Irishman grunted. “So why did I hear Koreans are tough?”

  “Different parts of the anatomy, Richie. Different altogether. I once heard a foreigner, a very dumb Russian, complain that I was a tough son of a whore. It wasn’t grudging praise. He was mad because I wouldn’t take his suggestion. Normally, a suggestion from a Russian is like falling down a well, but this time it was a good one. I knew it. He knew I knew it, but I knew if I took his advice, he would have an edge, or he would think he had an edge. Same thing.”

  “What was the suggestion?”

  “We were driving on an icy road. He told me to slow down.”

  “What happened?”

  “It was his car. Russian cars don’t steer well in the cold.”

  “What happens when Pak gives you advice?”

  “He never did.”

  “Guidance, then.”

  “Ah. Very good, Richie. That’s different. Advice is a question of will. I can take advice or leave it. The burden is on me. Guidance is all about relationships, circles overlapping.”

  “Did Kang ever give you guidance?”

  “No. He wasn’t the type.”

  “What were you doing in Berlin?”

  “What?”

  “You said you were on a procurement trip in Berlin. You picked up that piano roll. But that’s not why you were sent. Since when do police do procurement?”

  “I don’t work for you, Richie. I told you already, I’m not going to describe the phones or the cars or anything that doesn’t pertain directly to our discussion. This is my session; I’ll tell you what you need to know. That’s how we do it.”

  “It won’t work. You were in Berlin. If I don’t ask why, I get dinged when they read the report.”

  “Alright, ask.”

  “What were you doing in Berlin?”

  “None of your fucking business.”

  The Irishman smiled. “Well, now I am beginning to like you, Inspector. Why, I don’t know, exactly. It gives me the feeling I’m falling down a well.”

  10

  The next morning wasn’t so humid. It was still August, but the light was starting to change. The sun was losing its edge, and the morning shadows were softening so that even my neighborhood looked less ragged. Across the river, people in the tall new apartment houses were probably out on their balconies, scratching themselves and yawning, looking down on boulevards ten lanes wide. Very grand, but I found it depressing whenever I drove through that part of town. Nice buildings, but no sense of belonging to anything. No place for the old ladies to sit.

  When I walked into my office, there was a note from Pak on my desk. He always arrived early, read the overnight logs, prepared the duty sheet, and then went for a stroll. The note said I was to call Kang as soon as I got in. At the bottom of the note Pak had scribbled three stars over a tree. It didn’t mean anything to me. I figured Kang would keep while I made some tea, but then remembered our kettle had disappeared, so I went over to the Operations Building to borrow a cup of hot water. By the time I got back, Pak was waiting for me.

  “Did you call Kang?”

  “No. You didn’t say it was urgent.”

  “Didn’t you see the three stars?”

  “Since when does three stars mean urgent?”

  “Inspector, anytime the Investigations Department calls, it’s urgent.”

  “What can be urgent? I just talked to him last night at the Koryo. You want to hear? Oh, and he gave me back my pin.”

  Pak looked at my shirt. “I’m glad it’s back home again in your top drawer. Maybe you should wear it sometime.” He motioned me to follow him to his office. “You had a good chat with Kang? Anything special he wanted to discuss?”

  I went over what Kang had told me about the wrecked car and the bodies, including the boy. Pak drummed his fingers a couple of times on the desk, then stopped. It was a sign that something was bothering him. “Call him back. Let me know what he wants.” I started to pick up Pak’s phone, but he put his hand over mine. “Use yours. There’s less static.”

  “Something the matter?”

  “No. I had a dream last night.”

  “How many times do I have to tell you, dreams don’t mean anything. All chemistry and biology and electrical impulses.”

  “It was about a tiger.”

  “What was the tiger doing?”

  “Nothing. It was swishing its tail. Kind of a hypnotic look in his eyes. Just behind him was a house. Or what was left of it.”

  “Where were you?”

  “I was in bed.”

  “No, I mean in the dream. Were you climbing a tree, or trying to run away but couldn’t, with a hopeless feeling, stifling, like? Then you woke up and you sweated a little, maybe let your heart calm down as you looked at the ceiling?”

  “The tiger wasn’t doing anything. He wasn’t chasing me. He never chases me. He doesn’t have to. He just has to wait and swish his tail, in front of that ruined house. It’s an omen. I had the same dream just before my son died.”

  “Tigers are symbols of strength and pride. Cats and crows are a problem. Pigs are good. That’s what they say, anyway. Keep dreaming of tigers, as long as they aren’t chasing you.”

  Pak shook his head. “Dreams don’t mean anything, you say, and then you repeat old grandmothers’ tales about cats and crows.”

  “Trying to be helpful, that’s all.”

  “Try to be helpful by calling Kang from your office.” He waved me out the door.

  11

  Kang wanted to meet me at the top of the Juche Tower. He said there wouldn’t be anyone there at this time of the morning; the observation deck wasn’t even open. “It’ll be nice and cozy,” he said, “just the two of us. We’ll lock the elevator, and I can guarantee no one is going to climb 170 meters of stairs to find out what we are doing.”

  Pak was noncommittal when I told him where Kang wanted to meet. “That’s his style, everything in plain sight. And you can’t be any more in plain sight than at the top of that tower at nine o’clock in the morning.”

  “You think I shouldn’t go?”

  “I’m not wild about it.” He tapped his teeth with a pencil. “But it doesn’t really matter where you meet him. Every place is equally bad at this point. Let’s just see what he has to say.”

  The drive over to the tower took twice as long as usual because the normal route was closed off for repairs, and they hadn’t bothered to set up any signs. The next street over was blocked by a stalled trolley. I ended up on a flyover that took me the wrong direction, going toward an empty part of the city where there are a few stadiums and sports halls but nothing else. I looped around back into the center of town, took the old Japanese bridge downstream from the tower, and bumped along an alleyway between buildings to join the main road paralleling the river. When I pulled up, Kang was standing by the ground-floor entrance, under the base of the monument. I could tell from the way he glanced over at my car that he wasn’t happy that I’d made him wait again.

  As I walked over, he made a show of looking at his watch. “You ever turn up on time, Inspector?”

  I tried to look ashamed—no eye contact, the muscles in my neck relaxed so my head sort of hung down. “Screw you,” I thought to myself, but as long as I was looking at the ground, he couldn’t read my thoughts. It was positively the last t
ime I was showing any deference to this guy.

  Kang nodded to a woman standing in the shadow of the low doorway behind him. “This is Miss Shin. She’s been kind enough to put the elevator into service for us.”

  Miss Shin had a round face and playful eyes. Her hair was swept back into a single braid that was tied at the bottom with a band made of silver and gold thread. She wore loose-fitting leopard-spotted maroon pants and a white blouse with no collar—not exactly your everyday work outfit. The pin of the Leader rested over her heart, just above where her blouse swelled gently out. You pay more attention to some pins than to others.

  “Let’s get started.” Kang went through the doorway and started down the long hall that led to the elevators. Miss Shin fell into step with me.

  “You’re not afraid of heights, Inspector?” she asked in a low, throaty voice.

  “Don’t worry, I’ve been to the top of this thing, many times. Whenever foreign police officials visit, I have to take them up here and then walk around the grounds to hear the tour.” I looked over at her. “Funny, I’ve never seen you. Did you just start?”

  “It takes plenty of people to keep this place in working order. When it opened twenty years ago, there was a small army. We’ve cut back since then, but still there’s a lot to do. I’ve been here awhile. You’ve not seen me”—she winked—”but I’ve seen you.”

  None of us spoke in the elevator. Kang looked at his watch and then at Miss Shin. She gave a little shrug. I tried to figure out how well acquainted they were but gave up when I felt the pressure building in my ears. The motor whined for a moment just before we stopped moving and the doors opened. Miss Shin pressed a red button on the control panel. “Enjoy the view,” she said.

  Kang walked once around the observation deck alone, making sure it was clear. No one else could have been there, but like every intelligence type, he was a creature of habit. I stopped at the railing and looked out toward my neighborhood. East Pyongyang didn’t look so run-down from this height. The breeze had picked up, which meant the day would remain as clear as it was now, giving the city a sense of life it lacked under cloudy skies. When they were built, many of the older buildings had been surfaced with shiny materials, either designs made of tile or glitter mixed in with the paint, so that when it was sunny they danced and sparkled. From the top of the tower, the light glinted off everything below, a window here, a building or a car roof there. I traced the road from my apartment to the chestnut trees where the old man fixed bicycles, but he didn’t seem to be around.

  Kang tapped me on the shoulder. “No sense in looking at the old part of the city. You want to see the future, it’s there.” He pointed across the river toward the big ceremonial square and the massive People’s Study Hall on the opposite shore. “Funny, people say that Pyongyang resembles Washington. River down the middle, lots of parks and monuments, big tower in the center, not a lot happening. I don’t think they have anything like Kim II Sung Square, though.”

  “I thought you said we’d be alone.”

  Kang shrugged. “You mean Miss Shin? Don’t worry about her, she’s fine.”

  I turned back toward the view. “The shade from the foliage along the streets looks deeper in this sunlight. See those trees, just at the bend in the river, on that little hill?” Kang followed where I was pointing. “They’re more than four hundred years old. They were planted by the royal gardener, who was executed a year later for treason. As if a gardener could have anything to do with politics!” I snorted. “Before he was executed, he asked to be buried beside the trees, so his body could feed them and, as they grew, he could demonstrate his loyalty to the king.”

  Kang looked skeptical. “What’d they do?”

  “They chopped up his body and threw it into the river.”

  “Looks like the trees grew anyway.”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “How far does your jurisdiction run, Inspector?” Kang waved his hand lazily toward the city across the way. “If someone chopped up a body and threw it in the river, let’s say, from the base of that hill, would that be in your zone?”

  “We don’t really have geographic areas. We operate in three sections. Concentric circles in theory, though they aren’t actually circles because of the way the streets run and how the city developed. We call them fortresses. Inner fortress—key buildings and neighborhoods where mostly upper ranks live. Middle fortress—the hotels, monuments, subway stops, and major roads. And outer fortress—everything else.”

  “You?”

  “We don’t talk a lot about our individual assignments, if you know what I mean, Kang.” He leaned back against the railing and waited. I did some quick calculations. The Ministry didn’t want us discussing details of our assignments with other security offices. Coordination was not banned, but it wasn’t encouraged. No service could run an operation or a surveillance or even a simple patrol without worrying about stumbling over someone else’s activity. On the other hand, if Kang was determined to find out what I did, he could do that with a couple of phone calls to the right places. He knew it, but he wanted me to tell him directly. Part of the stupid games the Investigations Department people played. “Middle,” I said.

  “That means you end up doing most of the city. But whatever you don’t handle must have a red line around it, an inner fortress that is someone else’s concern.”

  “Something like that.”

  Kang looked at me thoughtfully for a moment, then turned back to the view. “From this height, Inspector, the city makes perfect sense, wouldn’t you say? It all fits together, tall buildings balancing traditional rooftops, rigid open squares balancing meandering parks, everything anchored visually and psychologically by this tower. Not like Beijing, with buildings springing up to no purpose and a jumbled skyline that can only create confusion and disorder in people’s minds.”

  I wasn’t about to interrupt. He wasn’t talking about architecture. Kang moved around to the northern side of the tower. “But this place doesn’t exist in a vacuum. From here what do we see? Fields lapping at the edge of the city, and beyond that, in the distance, mountains. Mountains. They last a long time, Inspector.” He walked around to the southern side. “And there, in the distance, the glorious road south. Let’s drive out there together some afternoon soon. Maybe we’ll be able to find where they buried that boy’s body.”

  Miss Shin had settled beside us, her eyes closed, a smile on her face as she enjoyed the breeze. The moment she heard Kang mention the body, she stopped smiling and drifted away.

  “The corpse from the wrecked car was taken to the morgue last night. The boy’s body was buried way back in the hills. His relatives never saw the body. They got an urn of ashes and a note from the hospital expressing regrets that the boy had been killed in an auto accident.”

  “And he wasn’t?”

  “I never knew a car crash that cut someone’s throat. Did you?”

  “Why are you telling me all of this?”

  “You know some things I don’t know. I know some things you don’t know. Simple addition, Inspector.”

  “Not possible, Kang. What you know and what I know don’t add up.”

  Kang turned to look upriver toward the trees I had shown him. “Too bad about that gardener.” He walked into the elevator where Miss Shin was waiting, reached around her, and pressed the red button. “Come on, Inspector. Back to earth,” he smiled. “Such as it is.”

  12

  As soon as he heard my report on the conversation with Kang at the tower, Pak reached into his desk and pulled out a ticket. “Go home. Pack a bag, take the rest of the week off. You need to be out of the city for a while. Trust me. Maybe Kanggye isn’t such a bad idea after all. Be at the train station tomorrow morning early, at 4:30. Give this to the stationmaster, name is Pak, not my cousin as far as I know. He’ll see you are comfy, away from the cigarette smoke and confusion of the masses. Good luck. Don’t keep in touch. I’ll contact you if there is any need. Stay away from
phones.” He saw the look on my face. “This is for your own good. It isn’t punishment, Inspector. I just don’t want you anywhere near Kang for now. If Military Security is gunning for him, something is out of kilter. Everywhere Kang goes these days, that thug Kim won’t be far behind. Better yet, hand in your resignation.”

  “Are you crazy?”

  “No. Resignation will get you onto the sidelines. We’ll say you were drinking again and I had to let you go.”

  “What’s gotten into you? I’m not resigning. And I’ve stopped drinking. Pretty much. Everyone knows that.”

  “Fine, be stubborn. Here, at least take the ticket.” He turned back to the papers on his desk, then glanced up at me, a look of concern passing over his face. “Can you wake up that early, Inspector? Whatever you do, don’t miss the train.”

  PART

  TWO

  When we are apart,

  The moon through the pines

  Is never bright in Kanggye,

  But a pale reflection on the lake that

  Nightly grows, watered by my tears.

  —Pak Hae Gun (1456–1497)

  The stationmaster moved slowly for such a small man. He took the ticket, squinted at the number, looked at me, then looked back at the ticket. At that hour, there was not much light in the station, just shadings of darkness. Somewhere in the building a bulb was burning. Whatever feeble watts it emitted floated in and out of clouds of cigarette smoke until sinking onto peasants with weary faces and expressionless eyes. A few sat on wooden benches, but most squatted on the floor beside battered cardboard boxes. Each box was tied with ropes that had been mended and spliced a hundred times. It seemed impossible that any of them would survive another tug or twist.

  “Pretty old ticket,” he said, in a voice that just carried the distance between us.

  “The number not lucky anymore?” I was guessing that it meant something to him, maybe from a list agreed on years ago. Pak wouldn’t have called him; he wanted me to slip out of town, not blare the news over the phone.