by James Church
“So you just backed out. But if you could have sneaked past her, you would have gone in.” I paused, thinking I’d calm down, but I didn’t. “If you’d had some gumption.”
Yang pretended not to hear my last remark, but I could see it had struck home. I wished I hadn’t said it.
“She’s an old lady, O, why should I hassle her? She did her job.” Yang looked sadly around my room.
“And you? What was your job, Yang?”
“I went for a smoke and a walk around. But I saw something while I was leaving. Two guys.”
Yang was uncomfortable. He looked over his shoulder, down the hall toward Min’s office.
It was already the longest conversation I’d had with Yang in years. “Go on.”
“Two guys, not SSD. They didn’t dress like SSD, they didn’t walk like SSD, not even when SSD is trying to pretend to be someone else. Clean shirts, nice cuffs.”
“So, not SSD. So, what?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Also not military intelligence. Something else, not like I’d ever seen. Maybe a new group that they haven’t told us about. I walked.”
“You followed them?”
“Nah, I was just walking behind, and they were walking in front. I happened to see the license plate on their car. It’s a special series, I think.”
“And this concerns me, my apartment, or the wallet?”
“Maybe none of them. There’s probably someone else in your building it concerns. Some old war widow, or the high school teacher that lives below you. Sure, that’s it, they sent two guys with nice cuffs out in a car with special series plates to play hide-and-seek with a high school teacher.”
That Yang could be sarcastic was a revelation; maybe it was a good sign. That he had stumbled on an unidentified surveillance team was not such a good sign.
“Well,” I said, “what if this teacher is up to something? Could be this teacher has a black-market radio; very likely, this teacher skipped a key lesson in the social studies section. I don’t teach social studies.” No sense avoiding the obvious question, so I asked it. “Why would I be of interest to anyone?”
Yang threw the wallet on my desk. “This.”
“I thought you said you didn’t make it to my apartment?”
“I didn’t, not when Min sent me.”
“You went there another time?”
Yang shrugged. “So, get mad. If someone saved me a lot of trouble, I might be grateful.”
“What trouble?”
“When I got there, a man was just opening your door. I coughed, and he limped down the hall. Cool as could be, didn’t miss a beat. Went a few doors down from yours and let himself in. He was a tall fellow, though a little stooped. Pretty good clothes for your neighborhood. Couldn’t see his face. You might try putting at least one bulb in the hallway; I’ll get you one. Maybe some locks, too. Doesn’t your building believe in locks?”
“We don’t fancy light in our building; it ruins our sense of sacrifice. Locks suggest a lack of trust. This man, maybe he mistook my room for his. It happens once in a while.” Actually, I’d never heard of it happening before, in all the years I’d lived there. Even the drunks knew their own doors. “How’d you get past the old lady?”
Yang put his finger to his lips.
I put the wallet in the very back of the drawer, right next to a piece of persimmon wood that I had been keeping for a slow day, something to pass the time. “Alright, I owe you a favor. What is it?” There weren’t going to be any slow days; I took the persimmon out of the drawer and slipped it in my pocket.
“Answer my question. Just do that for me. Why are we different?”
“Different, meaning what?”
“Apart. Separate. You are you, I am not. Why?”
“Is something the matter with you being you?” Maybe after years of not talking to people, the man had lost the knack. He wasn’t making sense.
Yang finally moved all the way into my office. “Mind if I sit?” He pointed to the chair but then walked slowly to the other side of the room, so we were talking across a space, however small. “I’m serious. What makes us different?”
“You ask a question I really hadn’t thought about before.” I was feeling my way along and watching Yang closely. “But now that you mention it, we are different. I’m older, I have more time in the Ministry. You’re taller than I am—which is a point I never underestimate, height—and probably smarter. Your mind works better than mine; you observe things I can never see.” Yang waited, motioned for me to continue, but I didn’t want to continue. It was going to get painful in a minute. The only things left would be unpleasant. “That’s about it, I’d say.”
“You know better, O, there’s more to it.” He looked at the floor for a long time. “I’m sad, you’re not.” Already it had the makings of a mournful list. “I have bad luck, yours is good. You have shown bravery, I am a coward. Your grandfather was a hero, mine was a traitor who went south. What would you do if someone’s life were in your hands, if by your sacrifice you might save them?”
“Depends.”
“On what?”
“On the moment. Bravery is momentary, it doesn’t stay with you. It’s a wave, it comes out of nowhere and then recedes. It’s not the same as goodness. That soaks into a person, never leaves them.”
“Like sorrow.”
“You’ve been through bad times, Yang. It’s not easy. Bad things happen. Lots of families had someone who went south and have had to live with it. Give yourself a break.”
“No, the others, my children, they went through bad times, I went through nothing. I was here. Just like I am now, talking, sipping tea. I probably had my feet up on the desk while they were suffocating. Nothing happened to me. But you know what? I have disappeared, O, by degrees. I don’t exist anymore. That’s what makes us different. You’re here, I’m not.”
I cleared my throat and started to respond, then just gave up. Whatever it was I was going to say, something appalling and hollow, decided not to get said. “I’m glad you came in to talk about something like this, Yang. Talking about these things . . .” The words dried up all of a sudden. There were only a few left, so I said them. “I wish I knew how to help. I wish I did, but I don’t.”
“Perhaps you can, O, you never know.” He walked into the hallway, then turned and came back in front of my desk. “It’s impossible to be anything but sad. I have nowhere else to go, nowhere.”
This was becoming embarrassing. I needed to break it off. “Maybe we should get a drink somewhere, after work. It’s easier to be philosophical with a shot of alcohol in your system.”
He shook his head. “No, I do better with a clear head. I don’t drink. And you stopped after Pak . . . died. Everyone knows that.”
Something in his voice made me sit up. “What else does everyone know?”
Yang moved over to my window and looked at the dark street. “It’s impossible to be happy here. You, of all people, know that.”
“Is that what you think? Is that what you and Li talk about in the dead hours?” I could have bitten my tongue. Why did I say something like that?
Yang pointed at the night sky. “Even the moon goes through phases. Not like this. Nothing should be this way, O. It shouldn’t stay like this, endlessly. Something’s got to change. Even the dead rot away.”
He turned around. There was nothing to say. We might have stared at each other until dawn, but my phone rang.
“I need to see you right away.” It was a woman’s voice, shaking, barely above a whisper. I remembered what I had said to Han about anonymous phone calls.
“Who is this?”
“You know who it is, Inspector.” The voice found itself; it was the Gold Star Bank manager.
“Where?”
“Near the Potang-gang Hotel, there is a group of three benches just where the road turns into the hotel lot. I can be there in ten minutes.”
“Not such a good place for a woman at this time of night. Pick s
omewhere else. Where are you now?”
“I’m on my cell phone, Inspector. How about your apartment?”
“My place? Are you crazy? I don’t have any chairs. Give me a second.” I looked up at Yang. “Where do you and Li go if you get hungry at this hour?”
“Nowhere. He brings in his own food; I never eat. But there’s a place where the foreigners go near the Koryo, open all night. The Ministry used to have a watch on it, just lazy duty. We pulled our people because nothing ever happened.”
“I heard, Inspector.” The voice on the other end of the line was building back to its regular sharpness. “I know where it is. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
“You seem well placed, ten minutes from everywhere.”
“See you.” The phone cut off. Yang had closed his eyes.
“I’ve got an errand to run, Yang. You alright here?”
“Don’t worry about me, O.” He didn’t open his eyes. “I’ve got plenty to do. Plenty.”
2
The place was small, with round tables lining the walls. It was filled with people, cigarette smoke, and the smell of beef cooking on gas grills. The customers were foreign, and they all looked at me carefully, on edge. A woman in a short silk dress walked over. “We don’t have any room. Everything’s booked.”
“There’s a table right behind you.” I knew she wanted me out, but she didn’t want any raised voices. Raised voices might be bad for foreign investment. Keeping the frogs out of sight and in the mud had to be done discreetly, with dulcet tones.
“It’s taken,” she said. “The party will be here in a moment.”
“Pretty busy place.”
The woman flushed slightly. “I’m sorry, but this is our busiest time.” She looked around. “Most of the customers will stay for another hour or so. People come and they sit. We make it friendly.”
“But not for Koreans.”
“Of course”—she flushed more deeply—“you are always welcome. Maybe another night.”
“Sure,” I said.
The woman looked past me, and relief suddenly filled her face. “Madam, how nice to see you again.”
I turned. The bank manager looked even taller in a smoky room.
“Inspector, I see you arrived first. You should have sat down and ordered a drink. Come, over there is my table. It has the best view.” She laughed, which was a surprise to me. I hadn’t realized she was capable of laughter. It was a beautiful sound. I knew I wanted to hear it again.
Miss Chon was given the chair with the view. I sat with my back to the door—so no one who walked in late would know a local was in the room, I supposed. When we were settled and had given our drink orders, she leaned across the table. “You’ve never been here, have you?”
“I don’t go out to restaurants very much.”
“Perhaps you should. You’ll meet people, a lot of people. Isn’t that what you do in your job? Meet people? I always thought police detectives were supposed to be social animals. Otherwise, how can they catch criminals?”
“No, criminals are antisocial. So that’s what we have to be to catch them. I’m quite antisocial myself.”
“I take it that is why you are such a good detective.”
“Who told you that?”
“No one had to, Inspector. I’m a good judge of people; in my job I have to be. Everyone wants loans. I can’t afford to be fooled.”
“You called me, you sounded upset. I’m here.” I looked at the table closest to ours. Two businessmen, drinking whiskey, bored. They spoke German, but neither had much to say.
The bank manager glanced at them. “They are louts. Jurgen and Dieter, inseparable. Some people think they are homosexuals, but I doubt it. Jurgen pawed me during a reception last month. The next morning he called to apologize, but he didn’t mean it. I told him I’d kick him in the balls if he did it again.” Jurgen winced; even if he didn’t understand the whole sentence in Korean, he must have had enough vocabulary to get the general drift.
I craned my head around, aware of a rolling wave of nasty glances coming our way. “You don’t mind being here with me?”
“No, not at all, Inspector. It will help my reputation if people see us together. Gives me some extra menace.”
“That isn’t why we’re here, though. You wanted to meet me somewhere in the dark.”
“Is your apartment dark?”
“I told you, no chairs.” Either she really wanted to come to my apartment, or she was playing a crazy game. Or she was just crazy. Whoever heard of a foreign woman coming to a local’s apartment? Maybe some big shot could get away with it, whisk her in while the guards looked the other way. I thought about it for a moment, then shook my head. Impossible. Anyway, we didn’t know each other. She didn’t even have a file. “I’m still investigating the robbery at your bank. You are still a witness. And I am still asking questions.”
“Fine.”
“Who are you?”
“My, my, that’s pretty broad. Can’t we start with something more specific?”
“You have a Scottish passport.”
“No, I do not.”
“I know you do.”
“Scotland doesn’t issue passports, Inspector. Scotland isn’t even a country, not anymore.”
I considered this for a moment. “Is that so? I met a Scotsman once, at the bar in the Koryo Hotel. Very firm in his beliefs, if I remember correctly. Very proud of his ‘country,’ and by that he was quite clear he meant Scotland.”
“He’d probably been drinking.” She cupped her chin in her hands and leaned slightly toward me, it gave her a deceptive air of submissiveness. “I carry a British passport,” she said. “I went to school in Scotland.”
The worst of all possible worlds. I was in a restaurant that was her territory, at a table that she claimed as her usual place, and she was lecturing me on geography. I knew Scotland didn’t issue passports, didn’t I? I kicked myself. “You went to school there. It doesn’t explain how a Kazakh woman gets a UK passport.” When in doubt, growl. Hell, it works for dogs.
“I married a British citizen, God love them all. He was a Scot, actually, a fair-skinned man with lovely shoulders and no brains.” She pursed her lips. “He’s dead, car accident on a slippery road in the Highlands.” I was momentarily lost; it was hard to believe she was a widow. She looked into my eyes. “That’s the wild part of Scotland, more or less.”
Her voice brought me back. “Thank you for the geography lesson.” We weren’t going to get anywhere at this rate. Maybe I needed to keep it simple. “Why did you go to school in Scotland?”
“Banking, Inspector. Kazakhstan wants to become the banking hub of Central Asia. Those with ambition go abroad to study, and Scottish banking practices are deemed to be just what Kazakhstan needs, tight, well managed, solid. The Bank of Scotland has a glorious history, centuries old. After eight years in Scotland, the idea of returning home made me restless, I didn’t think I could do it, so I tried to get a job with a bank in South Korea. Impossible, they are so sexist it makes you laugh. Does sexism make you laugh, Inspector?”
Up went a warning flag. I frowned. She smiled.
“A careful man.” She smiled again. “I heard about an opening for a foreigner to manage Gold Star. In London I went to your embassy for an interview. Do you know how hard it is to find your embassy in London, Inspector? No, I suppose you don’t. But I finally found it, and here I am.”
“You don’t have to be ashamed of being Korean, you know.”
“I’m not Korean. I’m Kazakh, you said so yourself.”
“That’s your nationality. But you’re Korean. Your blood is Korean. Your body is Korean.” I was speaking symbolically, but it wasn’t easy.
She pursed her lips and thought a moment. “No, Inspector, you don’t know the first thing about my body, do you?” Her foot brushed against mine.
Some questions you don’t touch. If we’d had our drinks, I would have taken a big swallow.
“I’m
Kazakh from the tip of my toes to the top of my head.” That included her waist, I thought, and saw the little warning flag again. When were they going to serve drinks? “My father, and my father’s father before him, as they say in our village. All Kazakh.”
“You look Korean, because that’s what you are. There are plenty of Koreans in Kazakhstan.” Her face was Korean, but why were her eyes from somewhere else?
“Don’t be a fool, Inspector. I wouldn’t be ashamed to be Korean.” She cocked her head slightly. “Certainly not a South Korean.” She let the blade stay in for a moment. I waited for her to twist it, but she knew enough not to. I never take these things personally. I don’t forget them, either.
“Let’s get to the point,” I said. “You asked to meet, and you sounded upset. If you have something to say, say it. Otherwise, I have things to do.”
She laughed, only this time there was no tinkle to it. “I was upset, just something personal. I needed a little company. Do you mind?”
“That’s not why you called.”
“Yes, yes it is, actually. I was scared, I don’t know why. This robbery thing has put me on edge. And then I started thinking about what you asked me. The point is, I don’t know what happened to that desk.”
“Meaning?”
“I didn’t ask for it to be removed.”
“You told me it was part of a redecorating scheme.”
“I just said that because I didn’t like your partner. Why is SSD part of this, anyway?”
“That would be none of your business, Miss Chon. None of your business. What was in the desk?”
“Nothing was in the desk. It was empty.”
“I don’t think so. It was too heavy to be empty.”
“Maybe it was just a heavy piece of furniture.”
“It was made out of pine. It was cheap, light wood stained to make it look like something else. I may not know much, Miss Chon, but I know about wood. If it was your desk, you must have some idea what was in the drawers.”
“I only used it when I had a client. It was more convenient than mine. But I never went into the drawers. It was already in the bank when I arrived. I tried to move it once, but it was too heavy.”
