A Corpse in the Koryo

by James Church

  I sat still for another minute, then walked into Pak’s office. The cabinet was open, all of the drawers pulled out onto the floor; the desk was a mess. On top were the folders about the Koreans from Japan, with the papers scattered everywhere. The blue bag was ripped open, and the money was gone. The notebook on the Finn hadn’t been touched. Kim was furious. I didn’t have any evidence that he was taking money from the south, but he didn’t know that. I had bought myself twelve hours to find Kang and make him pay for Pak’s death. After that, I didn’t care if Military Security found me.

  In late summer the rose blooms;

  The perfumed morning floats above the hills,

  And along the road where I wait,

  Again to hear the song of a voice that is gone.

  —Yang Hyong Jin (1715–1756)

  I decided to take Pak’s car. There was enough confusion on the streets that I knew I could get out of the city. Once on the highway, I’d be vulnerable to any traffic policeman or sentry who spotted my plates and logged them in, but that was later. It was a shock to find Pak’s parking space empty. It was a bigger shock to realize I’d forgotten that Pak had driven his car to meet Kang. It was probably still on the hill near the Chinese war monument. There was no time to get over there. Even if there had been, Kim’s people would have set up a cordon to see if anyone approached the car. Or Kang might have taken it, leaving his ancient Nissan behind.

  Both sentries posted at the front gate watched closely as I stood in the empty parking space. Neither of them belonged to the Ministry. The sentries at our compound were assigned from the army, changed at irregular times and always from different units. It was a brilliant idea. With the constant rotation, we never got to know the guards, and they felt no loyalty to us. Whoever thought of it was obviously a genius. This was the sort of idea that received a bonus. Like all good ideas rewarded with a bonus, though, it was flawed.

  I sauntered over to the guards, smiling, and pulled out one of Pak’s hundred-dollar bills. The guards yanked their heads back, suddenly interested in the top branches of the trees across the street. I dropped the bill close behind the guard on the right, the one who looked more alert. He moved his foot so his canvas shoe covered it, but he kept blocking what I needed, the phone to our duty driver. A moment later the phone rang. The guard reached back without turning his body, took the receiver from the hook, and held it out for me.

  “Who is this?” The duty driver was speaking carefully. “I just received an order from the Ministry that no cars are to leave the compound.”

  “Good,” I replied, loud enough so the guards could hear me without straining. “That means the duty car, too. Bring it around, so I can secure it.”

  “Inspector, is that you?”

  “Just me.”

  There was a pause, and I could hear a chair scrape the floor. “Are you all right?” The bonus idea had another flaw. It covered the guards but overlooked duty drivers.

  “I’m fine. Bring the car.”

  The phone clicked. The guard’s hand appeared again, and I put the receiver in it. He was still looking at the trees, and said to no one in particular, “My stomach’s bad. Must be the rice from overseas, they say it’s been poisoned. Makes me have to go. I might need some relief.” He gave a low whistle to the other guard, who nodded. Just then the sound of a car’s engine came from around the corner. I reached into my back pocket for the pistol Kang had given me. If the car was a black Mercedes, I wasn’t going to let them have the pleasure of taking me.

  It was a Volvo—an old burgundy Volvo nosing down the street, its bad tires hissing on the pavement. I slipped the pistol back into place.Pak had insisted we get a Volvo as a second duty car. “I don’t want anything that even looks like a Mercedes,” he said.

  The car pulled up to the gate and waited. The guards stood at attention. They gave no indication of seeing or hearing anything. You can’t forget what you never saw, and there’s plenty you might never see if there’s a hundred-dollar bill under your left shoe.

  I climbed in, and the car started rolling again. We didn’t pick up speed until we turned the corner onto the main road. There were more army trucks running in pairs. Every few blocks, one was stopped, hood up, engine smoking, a mechanic leaning against the cab, his cap pushed back, staring up into the sky and thoughtfully puffing on a cigarette.

  The driver didn’t say a word. I had the feeling he was worrying that with each passing minute, his fate was sealed tighter. I didn’t need him and he didn’t need me. “Pull over,” I said, so suddenly it startled him. “Get out. Tell them I held a gun to your head.” I took the pistol from my pocket. “This one.”

  The driver swung down a small street to an empty lot overgrown with weeds and stopped. He shoved open his door but didn’t move. It flashed through my mind that I had been set up. I turned to look out the back window. The driver shook his head. “Relax, we’re by ourselves.” He tapped the gas gauge. “There is only half a tank, but I carry a spare can in the trunk. Pak told me it was against regulations, but he kept it off the books. The left rear tire is almost bald, and the high beams don’t work except when it’s foggy.” I had thought he was scared, but his voice was steady. “I know what you think happened. Forget it. Kang says to meet him in Hyangsan. If that doesn’t work, the fallback is Manpo. Been nice knowing you, Inspector.” He climbed out, put his hands in his pockets, and strolled back toward the main road.

  For the first kilometer I had to dodge military vehicles, none of them paying attention to traffic laws, mostly using horns instead of brakes, but they thinned out when I got past the last big intersection at the edge of town. All but a few of the trucks were directed off to the right, toward the road that led out of town to a complex of army command bunkers. The traffic ladies were gone, replaced by soldiers wearing shiny helmets and carrying new automatic weapons. I went left onto an old road, over some railroad tracks, and then made a sharp turn up an embankment that formed the shoulder to the main highway. Either the left rear tire would last or it wouldn’t. I thought over what the driver had told me. Why was he passing messages to me from Kang? Who had slipped him into our operation? Maybe Kim and Kang were working together after all, and that’s why Kang got away. They killed Pak. What did they want with me? If Kang was waiting at Hyangsan, we’d end the game right there.

  At the first checkpoint on the outskirts of the city, a young traffic policeman with a long face stepped onto the road and waved me over. “Going somewhere? You’re almost out of your jurisdiction.” He was very tall and moved like a stork in a rice paddy, slowly, with an odd, deliberate majesty. His white uniform was spotless; the white hat fit perfectly on his head. I had no idea where they had found such a speciman, or why he was assigned to a low-level traffic checkpoint. The tall ones usually get better assignments.

  “The local security officer in Pyongsong called with an emergency. He said he had some information on a case.” It was the best I could come up with on the spur of the moment.

  “He must have been lucky to get through. The phones are down. There’s a lookout for you, Inspector.” He leaned down so his face was even with mine. “You don’t know me, but I know you. You’re O Chang-yun’s grandson. Military Security doesn’t want you to leave city limits.”

  “So what now?” He was polite, but I had the feeling he was going to be a problem.

  “If I told you to turn around, that’s what you’d have to do.”

  I started to turn the wheel, but he put his white-gloved hand on it. “That’s what you’d have to do if I told you. But like I said, the phones are down, and my radio doesn’t always work. Mostly it’s a miracle when it does.” He pulled his head back and stood up. “Road is clear from here to the Sinuiju turnoff. You ever been to Sinuiju? Nice place. From there you can go into China real easy.”

  “No. I don’t like border cities. You’re not from one, are you?”

  “Drive carefully, Inspector.” I started to thank him, but he was already walking back
down the road. In the mirror I could see him bend over and retrieve something from behind a tree. It was an old thermos with a black plastic cup. As I pulled away, he was pouring himself some tea.

  The Sinuiju turnoff usually had a couple of sentries standing around. Sometimes they stopped a few cars to break the boredom, but they didn’t exert themselves as long as there wasn’t an inspection team in the area. They didn’t even raise their heads as I went past. I wasn’t surprised. If Kim was tracking my progress—and I didn’t know if I could trust a traffic policeman who had a thermos—a black Mercedes would suddenly appear out of nowhere. Sometimes it seemed those cars just sprouted from the earth, spit up from hell.

  Past Kaechon, there were convoys of big brown trucks with field workers standing in the rear. Whatever the alert in Pyongyang, it hadn’t reached into the countryside yet, or no one wanted to get in the way of bringing in the crop. Gangs of women sat beside the road, resting from the harvest. A few had taken off their floppy hats and put them on the ground, where they fluttered with each passing truck.

  The fields gave way to hilly wasteland, and coming around a curve I passed a young girl walking alone on a deserted stretch of road. She held a dainty white sun-parasol over her head and had a white bag purse slung over her shoulder. What really caught my eye was her blouse.Crisp and new, but most of all red. Bright, bold red. She looked straight ahead, her free arm swinging at her side. I watched her in the rearview mirror for as long as I could. Where was she going all by herself, wearing a red blouse in the middle of nowhere? I almost stopped to offer a ride, but on second thought I decided she was one of those cranes on the celedon vase. Lifting in flight, going nowhere.

  When I pulled across the tracks onto the final short stretch of road that led along the river to the hotel, the moon was rising, pale and brimming with the sorrow of early evening. The sight of the hotel did nothing to cheer me up. The last time I was here, I had seen it only during the day. In the sunlight, even if you weren’t crazy about buildings that looked like wedding cakes, you could see that some effort had been made to fit the hotel into the landscape. At dusk, it looked like a spaceship that had wandered off course, or a big white bug feeding at the foot of the hills.

  The lobby was almost dark and seemed deserted. As I stepped inside, I spotted two people sitting on a sofa against the far wall. When she saw me, Lena lit a cigarette and looked away. Song, the singing security man, started, muttered something, and then disappeared through a doorway marked NO ENTRANCE. The front desk looked unmanned, so I wandered over to the sofa. “Shocked to see me?”

  “Not half as shocked as you are to see me.” She blew some smoke off to the side. “There aren’t any no-smoking rooms here, but the twelfth floor has a good view.” She’d been drinking, enough so that she slurred a word here and there.

  “So does the fifteenth floor, I hear.” I sat down next to her. “Out of your neighborhood, aren’t you?”

  “My papers are in order, if that’s what is worrying you.”

  “I’ll bet they are.”

  “I’m glad to see you.” She patted my hand. “Really I am.” For some reason she switched to Chinese; maybe it was because knitting reminded her of her mother. “I hope the sweater fit.”

  I realized I had never even tried it on, but I knew enough not to say so. “Did you have dinner yet?”

  “Still good at changing the subject, I see. Yes, I ate. They serve early. The dining room has closed.” She looked at her watch. “And I must get to the bar upstairs in a minute, before it opens.” She put out her cigarette slowly and then turned to me. “Tomorrow is promised as good weather.”

  Maybe I was tired, or maybe it was her perfume, but it took me half a second too long to realize what she meant. By then, she was at the elevator. There was a laugh from a chair hidden in the shadows behind a potted plant. The desk clerk emerged and moved behind the counter. When Lena stepped into the elevator and the doors closed after her, he laughed again. “You better fix that timing, friend, or you’re going to be one lonely inspector. The rules are you must, I emphasize must, have a reservation to get a room, but what I just saw was so pathetic, I’m willing to bend them. Lucky for you we have a room or two left. Breakfast starts at seven. Tell me now or you don’t eat.” He handed me a key: 1504.

  I dangled it in front of his face. “How about another floor?”

  “Can’t. We’re full and you don’t, I emphasize don’t, have a reservation. When we’re full, we use the fifteenth. Great views.” He gave me a sly look. “Don’t worry, the window won’t swing open in this room. The bastards soldered them shut.”

  The floor mat in the elevator said it was Wednesday. Either they were two days late changing it, or they wanted to get a good jump on next week. The hallway on the fifteenth floor was pitch-black. The only way to find my room was by counting doorknobs. When I rattled the knob on what I assumed was 1502, I heard the safety clicked off a pistol. I didn’t bother to apologize. At the fourth knob I opened the door, half expecting Kim to be sitting on the bed. Or Kang. The room was empty. Maybe they didn’t know where I was. One of them would by tomorrow. Someone roaming through the parking lot would see my plates and phone them in. I thought about walking up to the temple in the moonlight but remembered the climb and fell asleep instead.

  The knock on the door at four in the morning woke me. Something about that hour attracts hall walkers. I knew it wouldn’t be Kim. He wouldn’t knock, not after what happened during our last meeting. It was the local guy, Song. He looked uneasy as he opened the door, stepped in, and turned on the light. “Master key.” He held it up for me to see.

  “Good morning.”

  “I put new plates on your car, from Hamhung. Now it’s part of the Hamhung group that’s here to see the Friendship Exhibit, though there aren’t many of those Volvos left. Sort of stands out. I don’t really know if there are any in Hamhung, but no one’s going to check right away. Too much trouble.” He massaged his shoulder. “Don’t thank me. It’s my job.”

  “Did you have something else?”

  “Kang was here, but he left all of a sudden. He said you’d know what to do.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Yeah. If I were you, I wouldn’t stick around here, Inspector. The Military Security team down the hall is restless. They’re packing their equipment. Somebody’s coming up from Pyongyang tomorrow night to pick them up.”

  “Kim?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll be glad when they’re gone. And you with them.”

  “Any more cars with girls come up here?”

  “I wouldn’t know what you are talking about. Your old plates are in the trunk. Along with that gas can.”

  “How much gas did you take?” As I got out of the bed, he backed toward the door.

  “Don’t worry, you’ve got enough left.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Yeah, I’d do something about that rear tire. That’s what I’d do.”

  PART

  SEVEN

  2

  In the morning I went down to the front desk and asked the clerk to give Lena a message.

  “She’s in 614. Deliver it yourself if you want.”

  “I don’t. I want you to give it to her.” I handed him a sheet of stationery that had been in the room. There were no envelopes, so I folded it in thirds and then tucked in the edges. I didn’t write anything. I figured the blue button I’d found on the floor in the closet in the Koryo would be enough.

  3

  The pine needles made a soft bed on the slope of the hill facing the temple. No one could see anything from below; the spot was screened by wild azaleas and a grove of scrub pine trees. Lena had circled around and approached me from behind. I heard her footsteps, but not until the perfume reached me did I turn to look at her.

  She had on the same long skirt and the white blouse she’d been wearing the night I first saw her. The blue buttons were even brighter in the sun, but mostly it was her eyes that took the light. />
  “We missed our picnic last time,” I said. “I thought we could try it here.”

  “If I’d known, I would have brought something.” She was speaking Chinese, and I was never able to read much emotion drifting in the tones of that language.

  “I have the black bread and blueberry jam.” She didn’t look amused, and I began to worry that the whole thing was a mistake. “A small joke,” I said. “Sorry. I did bring some rice cakes from the hotel and a couple of apples. They’re tart this time of year.”

  “I see you have a bottle of beer, too. Do you have any glasses, by any chance?”

  “No. We’ll have to drink out of the bottle. Not so elegant, I guess. Next time I’ll bring some cups that I made a few years ago, out of persimmon wood. Liquor takes on the flavor. So does tea. Do you like persimmon?” I reached in my pocket, then remembered all I had was a piece of oak. “Persimmon is pretty wood. Has a nice glow. But it hides itself. Some wood tells you almost as soon as you touch it what it means to become. Not persimmon. It’s beautiful on the surface, almost unfathomable underneath. That’s why furniture made out of persimmon often looks odd. Someone tries to shape it into something it was never meant to be.”

  “Is that the greatest tragedy you can think of, Inspector, being shaped into something you were never meant to be?”

  “It is a sad thing, don’t you think?”

  “You’re not married, are you, Inspector? I’ve heard you live alone. Didn’t you ever want to be with someone?” It wasn’t the question I was expecting.

  “I’m fine. I’m with other people enough. I’m with you right now.”