by James Church
"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 "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 his 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."
5
"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?"
"fustfor 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. fust 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.<
br />
"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.
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."
"How late?"
"Two in the morning. The lighting isn't so good around there at that hour, and we don't have enough night scopes, but we could see one of them was carrying a small bag, probably tools. They let themselves in-which they aren't supposed to do-and thirty minutes later they came out again. I figure they jiggled a few wires on the commo equipment."
"Why didn't the Chinese guards stop them?"
"They had some sort of identification papers. Maybe the Chinese service is working with them. I don't trust the Chinese, not one of them." Kang turned on the engine. It coughed, just like it had at two in the morning in Kanggye. "No sense in hanging around here. Let's go back to the city."
"Wait, I've got my own car."
As I started to open the door, Kang accelerated past a minibus and out onto the road. "Leave it. Get a new one."
"Are you crazy? Pak will bounce me on my head if I leave that car here. I'm not even supposed to be driving it half the time."
We were speeding past the first set of nondescript concrete apartment buildings beyond the airport, and Kang showed no sign of turning around. "Don't worry about Pak. I told him you need a new car. It's banged up anyway. What did you do, drive into a ditch?" We braked suddenly, crossed over the center line, and slid off onto a dirt side road, past a traffic policeman who was standing at a checkpoint. The policeman looked blankly at Kang and then put his face back toward the main highway. Kang drove to a small stand of trees, pulled behind them, and turned off the engine. From the direction of the airport, two black Mercedeses sped past. The second slowed for a fraction at the checkpoint, but when the traffic policeman waved in the direction of town, the car accelerated again.
"I'm guessing you didn't want that Finnish detective here." I watched Kang slump down in his seat and pretend to relax once the two cars were out of sight.
Kang's lips toyed with smiling, then dropped the idea. "Well, I'm guessing neither did you." He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. "It would have been one more person I'd have to keep safe from snakes. Anyway, the two of you might have stumbled onto something that doesn't concern your investigation. But, no, I didn't stop him. And I never tamper with Foreign Ministry communications."
I opened the door. "See you around, Kang. I've got to get back to my car and then tell Pak I don't have to babysit for the next three days."
"Sometimes you don't listen very well, Inspector." When Kang reached over to pull the door shut, I saw he was wearing his shoulder holster, which was a surprise. The number of people authorized to wear concealed weapons in the capital is limited, very, very limited. "Your car is not where you want to be right now. I don't think it would have been a big explosion when you turned the key. They wouldn't have wanted to injure a lot of foreigners. But you might have needed the cuffs on one of your pant legs brought up several centimeters, like maybe to your knee. And any passenger in the car would have had his eyebrows singed." He rolled down his window to let in some air. "Now they're going to have to figure out what to do with your car. I hope the tank wasn't full. Waste of gasoline. I'll bet they drain it."
It took a minute before I felt like speaking. "Thanks. I owe you. I thought you said you couldn't help me here in the capital."
"I can't help you on the case, but Finland is important to my operations.
I can't afford to have the Finns mad at us and tightening up on regulations."
"So why didn't you want that Finnish detective here?" Kang's fingers were drumming the steering wheel again. "Don't tell me he works for you."
This time Kang smiled. "Okay, I won't tell you that. Next subject.
We need to talk."
"I doubt it. If Pak wants to work with your department, that's his business. If you and I can work out a deal on our own, that's fine. Like I said, I owe you." I could feel my blood pressure rising, and from the way Kang glanced over at me, my voice must have been following suit.
"But I draw the line, a thick black line, at working with my former brother. I'll save us some time. Don't bother raising the idea."
"Believe me, Inspector, I don't like your brother. We've tangled more than once. He and his comrade friends get in my way. When it's only a nuisance, I can ignore them, but every so often they threaten my people by compromising an operation. Your brother is right on the verge of doing that. He is still your elder brother, incidentally."
I meant to laugh cynically, but the sound got stuck in my throat.
"So you think I'm going to talk to him again? Have a fraternal chat?
You must be kidding."
"Inspector, there are several threads here. I'd say you are starting to realize they come together in an odd w
ay. You might actually reach some conclusions before it is too late. Meantime, your brother is about to cause me serious trouble. If you think that by keeping him off your investigation you've accomplished something, you're wrong. But that's your problem. If you rile him up, he'll get in my way. That's my problem.
See what I mean?"
"I scared the piss out of him."
"Bravo. Not good enough. We need him neutralized." Kang paused.
"Don't worry, I'm not talking about anything physical."
"Too bad."
"Wow!" He sat back. "A pair of scorpions. Do me a favor, put it aside for now. Whether and why you dislike him is not my business.
But I need him off my back, and I need you to help me figure out what will make him crawl back into his hole on his own."
"Rat poison."
Kang sat still for a moment, took a deep breath and exhaled, and then turned the key in the ignition. The engine sputtered once and came to life. "Pak said you were unreasonable on this, but I said you'd help. I guess not." He ignored the traffic policeman's salute as we passed, turned onto the highway with a squeal of the car's old tires, and drove with bored, silent concentration the rest of the way into town.
When we got to the bridge across the river from my apartment, Kang pulled over and reached into the backseat for a small package. All he said was, "I think this is for your picnic." Then he got out of the car and walked to the riverbank.
I wasn't sure what he meant. The package was bulky, wrapped in plain brown paper. Inside was a hand-knit sweater. There was no note, but there didn't have to be. Maybe there was still a trace of her perfume on it, or maybe I only imagined it. The sweater looked like it might be too big. But it was blue.
5
The next morning it was raining and windy. I rode my bicycle to the office. The traffic lady was not there, but my satisfaction at crossing the intersection aboveground was short-lived. An army truck spewing black smoke threw up a sheet of water as it passed me.
