A Corpse in the Koryo

by James Church

  During the day, I went over my notes on the case, called a few people who swore they knew nothing about the feud between Kang’s department and Military Security, and made a few more sketches for the bookshelf I would never build. Pak still hadn’t replaced our kettle, so the first morning I walked over to the Operations Building for a cup of hot water. They told me to get lost; their plumbing was out of order for the next week, and they didn’t have any water at all. I was about to suggest we combine our resources, my water with their hot plate, when one of them said hot plates didn’t grow on trees, and if I wanted to use theirs, why didn’t I chip in? To hell with them, I thought, and retreated to my office. One afternoon I went over to the Koryo, just to look around the eighth floor and to check the back entrances. I didn’t learn a thing.

  Whenever I went out, it was obvious I was being watched. The pattern was the same. In the mornings, they let me see them. For the rest of the day, if I went out they hung back, played peek-a-boo, but never tried to disappear completely. At night when I opened the door to my apartment, I could tell it had been visited. Nothing rough, a few things moved a little to the side, just so I would know they’d been there. They weren’t looking for anything in particular, and I had a feeling they weren’t about to plant anything.

  On Saturday, the third day, Pak came into my office smiling. “We’re going to have a visitor. A senior detective from the Finnish National Police Agency. His name is Pikkusaari. Something like that.” He waited for my reaction, because he figured I would say no. I didn’t say anything. “Wonderful, you are finally struck dumb. I’ll tell you, the decision caused a lot of screeching over the past forty-eight hours. The vice minister nearly had a stroke, complained it was a terrible insult to us. That was definitely the wrong thing to say.” He smiled radiantly. “The man has finally made a big mistake. I hope it’s fatal. The leadership wants to show we have nothing to hide on this, so when the Finns made the usual request for information, someone at the top decided to invite them over.” He went to my window and gazed into the empty street. “This Pikkusaari guy is supposed to get our fullest cooperation. That means”—Pak turned around and pointed at the files on my desk—“you tell him about the pine needles and maybe about the new labels in the clothing, but not about the Mercedes or the dead boy.”

  “The boy? What does he have to do with the Koryo case? And who told the Finns the corpse was one of theirs, when we really don’t know that for a fact, not yet, anyway? It’s what Kang says, that’s all. And what am I supposed to do if this Pikkusaari finds out about the boy and the Mercedes on his own? No one is going to want a foreigner to get a whiff of whatever is going on between Military Security and Kang’s department. In fact, if he does find out, someone around here will be accused of aiding the enemy, leaking sensitive information, something bloodcurdling.”

  “Don’t worry, this Pikkusaari won’t discover anything he’s not supposed to. And you know why? Because you’re going to be with him every minute he’s here. He’ll only be around for three days, arrives on the Tuesday flight and leaves next Saturday morning. Who knows, maybe he’ll help positively identify the corpse. Maybe he’ll even be able to supply something that will help us solve the case, miracle of miracles. The main thing is, he gets as much cooperation as he needs.” Pak cleared his throat with one of his nervous coughs. “I don’t know who told the Finns it was one of theirs. Could be whoever it was that killed him.”

  He looked at me, and I looked up at the ceiling trim. “You ever wonder about that trim molding? I mean, what’s under all that paint?”

  “No, Inspector, I have not. You want a guess?”

  “Sure.”

  “Whatever is under all that paint has nothing to do with Finland.”

  “Okay,” I said, “this guy gets as much cooperation as he needs, and he only needs so much.” Pak nodded. I dug around in my pocket for a decent scrap of paper and started making notes. “Does he have permission to leave Pyongyang?”

  Pak was never hard to read, and I could see the expression on his face shift like the gears on a truck from worry to suspicion and finally settle on resignation. “Why? What are you already planning?”

  “Nothing. But if he identifies the corpse, that may lead us out of the city, maybe even to where they have those pine trees.”

  “Which is where?”

  “They’re a type of mountain pine, short trees, grow out of rocks on the sides of hills.”

  “How do you know this?” I could see he was trying to imagine what rules I had broken while he was busy fending off the vice minister.

  “I had to do something for the past two days. So I did some research.”

  “Inspector O.” Pak rarely called me by name; when he did it meant something like an official pronouncement was coming. “We’re going to solve this case, despite the land mines being sown in our path. But we’ve got to do it in lockstep. And in this case, I choose the step, the pace, the direction. That means no bright ideas. No independent research. Can I be any clearer?”

  “What about the boy?”

  “Don’t harass me about that boy, I’m warning you. We’ll find out who did that, too. And eventually”—he stopped to let the word penetrate—“eventually, we may do some things your way. Hell, we’ll probably end up doing most everything your way. Eventually. But for right now, you have to go along with me.”

  “This isn’t about my brother, is it?”

  “No, it isn’t about that damned brother of yours, and maybe you don’t know it but you nearly got us both sent to a camp somewhere in the mountains because of the fool way you handled that. The waitress at the Koryo nearly wet her pants, she was so scared at what she heard you say to him. For a grown man, you act like an idiot sometimes, you know that?” By the time he finished he was breathing through his nose, trying to get control again. Something was eating him; Pak never got this angry.

  He didn’t know my brother, not like I did. Still, he was right. We had other problems. I’d deal with my brother later.

  “Trust me, chief, I follow your lead with this visitor.” Pak hated to be called “chief.” I did it to distract him. “Do I get an expense account? I’ve got to take him to dinner, just to be polite. He’s the guest. I’m the host. I can’t ask him for money, to pay for gas or my meals. It’s embarrassing. We are a hospitable people. They’re always saying that on the TV. Where’s he staying?”

  “I wanted him in the Ministry guest house, but the vice minister put up a fuss, so he’ll be in the Koryo. That’s good and bad. He should know enough to watch what he says in his room. If he doesn’t, please give him a little talking to. I still don’t know how Kim and his people fit in this. You may be right, there might be a connection between the eighth floor and Military Security, but you haven’t given me any proof yet, and I haven’t been able to find out anything. My sources stare into space whenever I raise the question. In the meantime, I don’t want to let Kim know if we find any of his droppings.”

  “The trees grow around Hyangsan.” I was studying a map spread out across my desk. “People think they’re stunted because they grow out of rocks on the slopes of the mountains, but they’re not stunted. They’re full grown. Just small. That’s why the needles are so little.”

  Pak looked at the map. “If the Finn was at Hyangsan, then this case is not what I thought it was. Where else do those trees grow?”

  “They used to be in Chagang, some village on a mountaintop, but I think they were all cut down twenty-five years ago by farmers trying to clear land that no one else wanted.”

  “You an expert on mountain villages all of a sudden?”

  “No, I made a phone call to the forestry department at the university. Don’t worry, I didn’t tell them who I was. They think I am organizing a botany tour. They said they were growing more of these trees and would try to plant them around the country starting next year, but right now the last ones in the wild are around Hyangsan.”

  “So how did our corpse get them in hi
s cuffs?”

  “Maybe he was staying at the Hyangsan Hotel and was hiking around. Maybe someone hid his body up there after he was killed. But at some point in all of this I’m betting he was at Hyangsan. Or at least his pants were.”

  “Won’t the records at the hotel show who he was?” Pak knew if it were that easy I would have done it by now. He was just thinking out loud.

  “No records. The last four weeks’ worth disappeared. The hotel manager says someone came and announced they needed to take them away for an audit. He thought it was part of the new economic directive, until the central audit people showed up and asked to see his records. Believe it or not, they keep some of the records on a computer now, and whoever took the paper copies didn’t think to look there. But the computer stuff is only partial, because the machines crash whenever the power fails, and that wipes out the memory. Our technician says he read in a manual there is a way to get at the memory if you have the right equipment.” I suddenly realized how laughable that sounded. “Which means there is no way we’ll ever get at the memory.”

  Pak was lost in thought. “I’m too old for this. We used to work just with paper, remember? And those paper files were real good …” His voice trailed off, “Damned good.” He shook his head and started out of the office. “I’m going to get lunch. You think about how you’re going to deal with your new Finnish partner. Give me a daily plan or something. I’ll need to justify extra gas if you go to Hyangsan. And you’ll need rooms and meals. Tell your new friend Pikkusaari to stick with the tea. The coffee they serve up there isn’t so good.”

  3

  “What do you know about Kang’s operations in Finland?” The Irishman turned off the tape recorder. He asked it quietly, but he didn’t pretend he wasn’t interested. I had been expecting the question.

  “Nothing. He never said anything. And I never asked.”

  “Pak didn’t talk about it?”

  “How would Pak know about overseas operations?”

  “Pak was a smart man. He knew Kang pretty well. People talk to each other, even in your country.”

  “How would you know whether people talk to each other in my country, Richie? Do us a favor, it’s getting late. Stick to what you know.”

  “You haven’t a clue what I know, Inspector. Could be I already have the whole story and I’m just using you to check a few facts. Could also be I don’t care about the story and I’m just playing a game with you. For someone who isn’t holding anything and is sitting at my table, you are one hell of a card player.”

  “Here’s a card I’m holding. Finland. There’s where you first got interested in Kang, isn’t it? He must have been using it as some sort of base. Quiet, out-of-the-way place, where people mind their own business. I’ll bet you can go for long walks with no one else around. What did he do to catch your attention? Or did the Finns alert you?”

  The Irishman stared at me. “You ask questions you don’t want to ask, Inspector.”

  “You mean you don’t know?”

  “Good, that will do. I don’t know. You satisfied?”

  “The man’s dead. You’ve got a file ready for the trash. But you’re asking me to give you more details for it, and I don’t do that unless I know why.”

  “I’m not going to tell you anything.” He turned off the tape recorder. “And this is nothing. Kang was what we considered our reality check. Fabulous code name.”

  “He had a code name?”

  “Just for us, internally, a convenience. We called him Goldilocks.” He paused. “You with me?” I nodded, so he continued. “There’s a lot of garbage circulating about your country, but you know that already. Crazy stories. Dinosaur sightings. Of course, we deserve some of the credit—our people set loose a few rumors that bounce around until they get picked up in slightly different form by the Italians or the Germans. They repackage them and eventually pass them to us. Then there’s the stuff put out by your people to keep us chasing shadows, a little of it very good, a little of it hilarious. Most of the rest is just someone trying to make money on the side, and someone else reporting it in order to get credit for turning in more paper. Hard to keep track of it all. Eventually, we figured there had to be something to keep us on solid ground. Someone we could trust.”

  “Kang wouldn’t work for you.”

  Richie shrugged. “You don’t work for me, Inspector. But you’re here, and I have a tape recorder running.” He let that idea float across the room, then he went on. “I never met him, but from what I heard, your Mr. Kang had a good head and a perfect sense of reality. Not too hot, not too cold. Just right.”

  “So what do you do, now that he’s gone?”

  “He can’t have been the only smart person in your country.”

  I smiled.

  The Irishman waited. He closed his eyes and lifted his chin again, like a tourist pretending not to notice the clouds had covered the sun. “Alright,” he said finally. “We can let that go for now, Inspector. Let’s take your advice and stick to what we know. Pikkusaari, for instance. What would we say, friendly sort? Dour? Someone who knew his way around?”

  “I’d love to tell you, Richie, but I can’t. I never met the man.”

  4

  On Tuesday morning I was out at the airport as the plane taxied in front of the terminal building. I watched each passenger walk down the stairs and fixed on a short brown-haired man, about sixty, as my Finnish policeman. There was supposed to be an interpreter from the Foreign Ministry, but he hadn’t arrived, and I had to hope the Finn and I had enough Russian between us for the greetings, getting the bags past customs, and then some small talk on the drive to the hotel.

  The brown-haired man turned out to be a German agro-specialist. There were no Finns on the plane. As I went in search of a phone, the Foreign Ministry liaison man came running up to me, his face perspiring even though it wasn’t warm in the building.

  “What happened to our Finn?” The liaison man and I had worked together before. It probably wasn’t his fault, but something about him irritated me whenever I saw him. Maybe it was his smile. It sat on his face like a fly on a rotting peach.

  His eyes went toward my lapel, searching for the pin that, after years of working with me, he knew wouldn’t be there. Some people stare in silence for a moment when they can’t find it, then pick up the conversation. The liaison man wasn’t one of them. He would always look away furtively, as if it were the first time he had ever encountered such a thing, then start to stutter slightly before he got hold of himself again. “The F-F-Finn couldn’t make the f-f-flight. Visa problem.”

  “You mean the consulate in Beijing screwed up? Someone’s head is going to roll and it’s not going to be mine.”

  The liaison man wiped his face with a blue silk handkerchief, the sort they sell by the box at the Beijing airport. “The authorization never arrived. We called the c-c-consulate to make sure they would issue the visa. They said it would be no problem, as soon as they got the f-f-forms.” He paused a few seconds; it seemed to help him calm down. “The code clerk said there was a transmission at the right time, but nothing came through, so he thought it was just the normal equipment problems. Then he looked again and saw that the send-number was valid. We double-checked it against our records.”

  “It was blocked?”

  The liaison man swallowed hard and lowered his voice. “I d-d-didn’t say that.”

  “No, you didn’t say that. So, what about the train? Get him his visa tomorrow, put him on the train at Beijing station. He’ll show up here a few days late, cranky and tired, but it won’t be anything we haven’t faced before with other official visitors, thanks to your ministry.” I could see the liaison man was forcing himself not to look at my lapel again. “Don’t worry.” I leaned over and whispered in his ear. “They don’t put it in your file if you stand near me.”

  “R-r-real funny.” He took a step back and, as he always did, started mentally running through excuses for breaking off our conversation.
r />   I decided to help him out. “We done?”

  He nodded and looked relieved but then hesitated. “When the Finn found out he’d flown all the way to Beijing and there was no visa waiting at our consulate, he was pretty upset. Han, the guy at the visa desk, told me he asked him to stay an extra day while things were straightened out, but the Finn grabbed his passport, said he had better things to do with his time, and stomped out the door. We called his hotel room to offer the train—sometimes we can come up with ideas on our own, you know. You cops aren’t the only ones who can think.”

  “Swell. You can think. What happened?”

  “He had already checked out. There’s a Finnair flight from Beijing back to Helsinki at 2:00 P.M. He’s probably at the airport right now, waiting to board.”

  At the edge of the crowd, near the front door to the terminal, I spotted a familiar profile. “We’ll be in touch,” I said to the liaison man, just as he dropped his hankie. When he knelt to pick it up, the pin fell off his lapel. “Not your day, pal,” I said. “Welcome to the club.”

  Kang gestured for me to follow him outside. As I walked into the parking lot, he was climbing into an old, dusty blue car, the Nissan I’d heard start up outside my hotel in Kanggye. I got in the passenger’s side. Kang glanced in the mirror, adjusting it so he could see what was behind us without having to make it obvious. “Airports are exciting places, don’t you think, Inspector? You never know who you’ll see. Or who will see you.”

  “You know who played this stupid game on the visa for the Finnish policeman?”

  “I can’t say for sure, but we do a little of this and a little of that in Beijing. A while ago we rented an apartment overlooking the back of the consulate. We haven’t shared either this or that with Kim, incidentally. From the apartment window we can see everyone who enters and leaves the consulate. A full three-man Military Security team was there the other night, late.”