Chapter Two

The next morning, Min came up the stairs at seven o’clock. He walked by my office without looking in. I heard him open the file cabinets at the end of the hall and then the sound of him humming. A few minutes later, he walked back. This time he stopped at my door. “Good morning, Inspector.” He smiled and pointed out the window. “Beautiful spring day, fresh air, not a cloud on the horizon.” He smiled again. “Makes you glad to be alive. Had a good night?” There was no touch of irony in his voice. He sounded completely free of worry.

“Yes, great night.” I raised my head and searched his face with bleary eyes.

“Good. Let’s go over the bank robbery in about an hour, sort of put it in order. Then we can work on the security detail, nothing elaborate. Fine by you?” Min was practically bouncing on his toes, he was so full of good cheer.

“What do you know that you aren’t sharing?”

“I know, Inspector, that gloom only leads to more of the same. This morning I got up, put my feet down on the floor, and told myself that nothing can be as bad as it looks. We have troubles? Other people have more. This summer it may flood, the rivers may overflow their banks, and the glorious dams we read about every day in the newspapers may burst. But not today, and this is the day we are going to live in.”

I groaned. “On second thought, don’t share it with me. Just leave me alone for another hour.”

Min shook his head. “Your problem is, you don’t get enough exercise.” He grinned and walked back to his office, humming.

A moment later the phone rang. “O, get in here.” There was no lilt in his voice, just naked urgency. “Now.”

Min was staring openmouthed at a single piece of pale blue paper when I walked in. Actually, not very blue, but very lightweight, the paper that the Ministry uses for Most Sensitive information. Sometimes it is even on regular white paper, because the blue stuff runs out. But we still call it a Blue Paper. If we need to see one of those reports, we go to the Ministry to read it. They never get out of a special area in the Ministry, and certainly never make it to our office. Never, except of course for the one that was in plain sight. Min looked up. “Shut the door.”

“There’s no one else here.”

“Shut the fucking door, Inspector!”

I swung it shut. “You want it locked?”

Min rubbed his face with both hands. “Sit down. This”—he picked up the single sheet of paper between his thumb and forefinger and waved it limply like a flag of surrender—“this was in the daily mail I picked up before coming here. It isn’t supposed to be in our mail. I think we aren’t even supposed to know it exists.”

“Bad?”

“Bad? Oh, no, not bad. Terrible, appalling, horrifying.” He didn’t even have to pause to find the triplet; I mentally braced myself. “It says SSD suspects Yang is part of the plot against the British VIP.”

“Ridiculous,” I heard my subconscious mutter.

“It also says that you and me and Li are to be put under special surveillance.”

“Finally, a useful piece of information.” I had the sensation of threads being pulled together. “That explains the squad Yang saw at my apartment house the other day.”

“What? Surveillance? If he saw them, that means they saw him near your apartment. And they may have heard what you said yesterday.”

“About what?”

“First, you suggested that Yang lead the security detail. The man is part of the plot, and you recommend him to get on the inside! We don’t even have to guess how they’ll interpret that.” He looked at me strangely for a moment, then shook his head. “And then, you know, the other thing.” Min got up from his desk and looked out the window. “They’re probably over at the Operations Building right now watching us. I knew this was going to be a bad day, as soon as I woke up.”

“What about Yang?” If that report was right, Yang was in danger. He was in danger even if it was wrong. Anything on paper was dangerous.

“What about him?”

“Do we let him know?”

“Are you crazy, Inspector? I want him out of this office, immediately.”

“Why? Yang wouldn’t hurt a fly. SSD is being fed a line by someone, and I have a feeling I know who it might be—a Russian who sells stockings.” Logonov might not be capable of murder, but spreading disinformation was another story. The Russians liked to keep SSD jumpy, overload the circuits. Somehow a few years ago they got hold of a Ministry phone book, and they just went down the list. Someone’s big Slav finger ended up on Yang’s name, and it got cranked into the disinformation machinery. They probably hadn’t even checked to see who he was. “That Russian’s visa stamps are phony; Han was furious I had anything to do with him. I think he’s mainly here as a spotter, but who knows what he passes in those stockings? Tell me, why would Yang get himself involved in a plot of any sort? The man can barely stumble down the stairs without feeling he has offended someone.”

“I’m not interested in the drama of his inner life. We need to get him out of here before he takes us all to the coal mines. And you need to stay away from SSD’s operations; I shouldn’t have to tell you that. We have enough trouble of our own, without stepping on their flowers.”

“You going to take that Blue Paper back to the Ministry?”

“How can I? If I take it back, they’ll know I read it, and I’m not supposed to have done that.”

“They’ll know it’s missing, not right away, but it’s numbered. By the end of the week, when they count the copies, they’ll see it’s gone. Then they’ll search. They’ll question people. Nasty questions. Bad technique.” I paused. “Wait a minute. How do we know they didn’t plant that in your mail bundle? How do we know they just don’t want us to think Yang is involved?”

Min glumly turned that idea over in his mind. “Sure, and how do we know this isn’t a test of my honesty? They want to see what I’ll do. What am I going to do?”

“But what if it’s real?”

“You just said Yang wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

“Yes, but they don’t know that. They may think the information is real, and they need to know if we can be trusted.”

“Inspector, we can go on like this for hours. Anything is possible.”

“Get rid of it. The Blue Paper. Get rid of it.”

“But if they planted it . . .”

“Trust me, Min, I was just thinking out loud. They didn’t plant it. It was a mistake, an unintentional security breach. If you report it, the clerks in the central mailroom will be put through hell. As soon as they realize it’s missing, they’ll fix their logs. No one else will know it’s gone. It’s happened before. But we have another problem.”

“I don’t want to know.”

Min knew the problem, he just didn’t want to hear it out loud. We had to do something about the case in order to bury these crazy reports that someone in our office—and by implication, all of us who dealt with that person—was involved in a plot against a foreign visitor. It was so ridiculous it could only be a cover for something else. I put a gag in my subconscious before it could say what I was thinking.

“You do what you have to do,” Min said. “If it doesn’t work, don’t forget, I won’t be there to wave when the truck drives away.”

“Don’t worry, if it doesn’t work, we’ll both be in the back of the truck.”

2

Even a man with short legs will take long strides. He walks along the street, you tag along behind, simple as can be. A man can be followed at a reasonable distance, comfortably. I once followed someone we suspected of trafficking in bad medicine for two days. The weather was good. It was a pleasure to be outside. I almost bought him dinner afterward, he made it so easy. But women are different. They amble, they saunter, they stop for no particular reason to look at nothing at all. It is impossible to adjust your pace, to anticipate what they will do, and so you end up running up their backs if you aren’t paying attention. It does no good to find yourself standing next to the woman you are tailing. She won’t turn her head to look, but she’ll notice you out of the corner of her eye, and then you might as well go home.

If I was going to get serious about the bank robbery case, I had to make up for lost time. Someone didn’t want us to be on it, whoever was floating those stories about Yang and the British visitor. But someone else did want us on it. The only thing I had to go on was the weeklong silence, and the fact that people who seemed to be connected with the robbery, or to know something about it, were disappearing. Or turning up dead. Silence never meant quiet, not on these sorts of cases. It meant a frantic, ferocious struggle in offices I never visited, on phones I never called, in places I had no wish ever to see.

Getting Yang in the clear, and pulling everyone else in the office to a safe place, required our getting traction on the robbery case. Whether that meant actually solving it, I didn’t yet know. Either way, we had to be seen pursuing it, and to do that, we had to start up the active investigation with something simple. Jumping too far ahead would suggest that we realized this was more than a robbery. The easiest, safest thing at this point was checking each one of the bank clerks. Little Li was too conspicuous. Yang didn’t like crowds, and anyway I couldn’t put Yang out on the street now; he’d be followed by a train of people from a special group whose purpose and place in the scheme of things we didn’t know. It was unlikely there would be a move against him; it was too soon for that. But sometimes people get desperate out of sequence, and if they did, they might try something against Yang.

Luckily, the weather was good, and I liked walking at sunset this time of year. The light was pure, and the air was very soft. How bad could it be, following a young woman and watching the sun go down?

I picked up the first clerk as she left the bank at dusk. The files said she came from an unremarkable family, and there was nothing in her background to excite suspicion, except that her grandfather had gone south during the war. There was a vague note about tragedy on her mother’s side, but no details. You’d have thought someone would have included a page on that; maybe it had fallen out. Tragedy was leverage, or weakness. Her school records seemed fine. She wasn’t married, but she lived in her own apartment rather than with her parents. That was a little unusual; it probably meant that someone was keeping her. The one thing in the file that grabbed me was the entry under her employment. She had been hired at the bank about two months ago.

The clerk had long hair and wore a trench coat that went to her ankles. It was slit in the back. The tiny picture in her file showed her to be plain looking—small oval face, sharp chin, wide-set eyes, high forehead. I couldn’t see her face very well as she came out of the bank, but I thought I recognized the chin. She had on dark brown high-heel shoes but couldn’t walk in them very well, so it meant we would not be going too fast. It wouldn’t be much trouble to keep her in sight, even as the light faded and the moon climbed into the night. I kept back about seven or eight meters. Once I dropped my keys and pretended to hunt for them while she stopped to talk to an older man. I didn’t get a good look at him, but when he walked away, he moved slowly, as if his feet hurt.

From the route she was taking, I felt pretty sure that the clerk was headed for a bus stop near the train station. That was a guess, but it seemed a good one. If nothing else, it let me walk as if I really had a destination in mind in case she started noticing me. If I needed to, I could drop back a little. I didn’t even have to look at her anymore; to anyone watching, it would appear we simply happened to be heading to the same place.

Getting too congratulatory over your own technique is never a good idea. Keeping back is smart, until it isn’t. I lost her for a long minute in a crowd of people unloading onto the sidewalk from a broken-down tram, but I just kept walking toward the train station and finally picked her out of the gloom again about ten meters ahead.

When she went down the steps of an underpass, I gave her an extra twenty seconds. The underpass was dark, and you could lose someone in there. I wanted to see her come up the other side. A minute passed, then two. She didn’t emerge. People were streaming up and down the steps, but she wasn’t one of them. Finally, I went down. No one was stepping over a body; people weren’t swerving to avoid someone standing still. She wasn’t there, she hadn’t climbed up the other side, she hadn’t doubled back and come up the steps where I was waiting. She was gone.

3

As I walked back to the office, bad thoughts kept running through my mind. My skills might be getting rusty, but I would not lose a woman on high heels unless she was very well trained. And she wasn’t alone, it seemed. What was it I’d heard at the bank party about Miss Chon, that she was good at slipping away? Away to where?

After losing the clerk in the underpass, I doubled back to make sure she hadn’t ditched me and gone for a bowl of noodles somewhere. She hadn’t, at least not along the route we’d covered. I might have missed her as she climbed the underpass steps; she might have come up the other side exactly at the moment I went down. There is such a thing as coincidence, but the Ministry doesn’t favor it as an explanation. Frankly, I didn’t, either, not in this instance. Who had trained her? Why would a bank clerk need to know how to lose a tail? Worst of all, was my technique getting so bad that she spotted me, even in the dark?

By the time I got up the stairs and into the hallway leading to Yang’s office, I knew it would be impossible to solve this case by putting together a clue here and a clue there. There simply wasn’t time, especially if everything was as complicated as it now appeared. The first thing I had to do was pin Yang up against the wall and make sure none of that crazy conversation we’d had the other night led anywhere. I wasn’t worried that he was involved, though I made it a point never to be sure about anything until I was. The fact was, he was mentioned in a report where he shouldn’t have been, and we needed to know why. Despite my first reaction, I knew it couldn’t be the Russians who had floated his name. Someone in our unit appeared in a Blue Paper, in the middle of everything that was going on—coincidence? Not a chance. This wasn’t from a foreign service. It was from the inside, people who knew something about Yang. They might have picked his name at random, but that would have been out of character. When they wanted to use someone, even for target practice, it was for a reason. If they put his name in a Blue Paper, they had thought about it, researched, weighed other options and other people. What was there about my melancholy colleague that rang bells for them, whoever they were?

I didn’t bother to knock. “Yang, I’m going to phrase this as delicately as I can. Whatever you’re up to, it’s not courage. It’s foolishness.” Yang was at his desk, staring off into space with a sad look in his eyes.

He glanced up and acknowledged me standing in his doorway, but he didn’t change expressions. “So, you figured out who was driving that car with the special plates,” he said. He waited, but I didn’t reply. Only then did he nod for me to sit down.

The visitor’s chair had one leg shorter than the others. It had been that way for years. Sooner or later we’d fix it or get another chair. “Did I?” I said, trying to stay upright. “Did I figure it out?”

“They’ve been watching you in order to watch me. And once they spotted me at your apartment, they became doubly interested.” Yang hunched over his side of the desk. He and Li shared an office; they sat on either side of a single worktable. Li was at the Traffic Bureau, checking reports on bus accidents. I hoped he might be able to shake something loose, where I had not.

“Alright, tell me. Why are they watching you?”

Yang shrugged, a minor movement of his shoulders. He blinked slowly while he took a breath. It was like a mask of death, his face when he closed his eyes. For a moment, I almost thought he had died right in front of me. Then he moved slightly and opened his eyes again. “You’d have to ask them.”

“Look, Yang, if I had the time, I’d probably play this game with you for weeks. I raise a subject obliquely. You parry implicitly. I tiptoe to the side door. You slip out over the roof. Back and forth. We’d even begin to look forward to it. Every day, a new line of attack; every afternoon, a new line of defense. But we don’t have time, and I just lost someone in a tunnel, which I always hate to do. So, I need to know why you are being followed. I need to know urgently, am I clear?” It made me uneasy to push him like this, but I didn’t have much choice.

“I told you, O, I don’t know. How would I? How would I know why anyone follows anyone else in this country?”

“ ‘In this country,’ Yang?” I smiled so broadly my cheeks hurt. “What would that mean?”

Yang stood up and took a half step toward me. “Nothing, O,” he said. “It doesn’t mean anything. Don’t worry, I’m not afflicted with a sudden dose of courage. I can see. But I can’t act. It’s a sort of moral paralysis. Many people have it, I’m beginning to understand.”

“My friend, nothing you’ve said in the past two minutes makes me feel better, put aside that most of it doesn’t make any sense at all.” There wasn’t any decision to make. It had nothing to do with believing Yang or not. I wasn’t going to throw him to the lions. “Alright, if you didn’t do anything, and you aren’t about to do anything, then how do we get this special squad off your neck?”

“Don’t bother,” Yang said. “It’s not worth your time.”

“I’m not bothering for your sake. The person I’m worried about is me. If they don’t like something about you, then it rubs off on everyone nearby, and I’m pretty near. I have enough to worry about. Don’t forget, the guy who was in here the other night said I stole his wallet. Min says the guy was well connected, and you told me he was pulled out of here by people with guns and funny plates on their car. He turns up dead, they go down a list of suspects.”

“No one is going to touch you, O. You lead a charmed life.”

I laughed.

4

“I’m only going to tell you this one more time. Sit up when I’m talking to you.”

I sat up, not because I knew why, but because when I hear someone using that tone of voice and my hands are tied behind me, it is automatic.

A hand shot out and hit me across the face. “Not fast enough. When I say something, you do it, don’t stop to think.”

It was too dark for me to distinguish any details, though whoever had just hit me didn’t seem to have the same trouble. I sat as straight as I could and tried to look intelligent. Sitting straight seemed to clear my head. A simple question bobbed up: Where were we? I took a breath, and the oxygen helped me decide it was the wrong time to ask. Whoever had just smacked me wasn’t there to answer questions.

“Good, now at least you are with us.” It was growled, the way people with big bones sound. Probably not someone I wanted to annoy.

A door opened off to the right, and then a lamp clicked on. The light was subdued. It was soothing in a way, though I would have liked to be able to see more. A tall man dressed in a brown suit took a step out of the darkness in front of me. He stopped just at the point where I would have been able to see him clearly. When he talked, he hung back a little in the half-shadow, so I couldn’t watch his eyes. “I’m sorry we had to hit you like that, but you seemed to be dozing off.” He spoke slowly, in a pleasant voice, low and flowing. You might think he was the host, carefully considering the needs of a guest. “Would you care for a drink of water?” Very amiable offer.

“Who are you?” I knew the technique. Start soft. Maybe the man in the shadows would give me an answer. He was moving like one of those interrogators who try to establish “trust” at the outset. For sure, things weren’t going to get any better, so I might as well ask my question before they got worse. At least I’d know whose toe I’d stepped on.

“Now, Inspector, let’s put a few simple rules on the table. Lay them out, get them straight between us, and then not have to concern ourselves with them anymore. I know who you are; you have no need to know who I am. I ask the questions, by and large. You answer what you can, as honestly as you can. If I think you are lying—well, you have a reputation for being straightforward, so I won’t worry about it.” All said pleasantly, as if these rules were well understood by every guest but needed to be reviewed anyway.

“A drink of water would be fine. But I need my hands free. I only drink when I hold the glass.” I needed to set my own rule, if only a little one.

The man in the brown suit moved a millimeter into the light, just enough so I caught a glimpse of a smile. “That is exactly what I would say in your place, Inspector. I think we will get along quite well.” He nodded to whoever was standing in the darkness beside me, and as he nodded, the shadows played on his face. The cuffs were removed from my hands, and I closed my eyes as my arms regained feeling. “There, you see, Inspector, already the situation has improved.”

“I’ll take that glass of water now.” The glass appeared in front of me. I put it to my lips and drank enough to wet the inside of my mouth. I held the glass out, and it was taken away.

“When you want more, Inspector, you need only ask.”

“I thought I was supposed only to give answers.”

There was a low growl behind, but from in front of me I heard a faint laugh. “Fair enough. Let us say I give you blanket permission to ask for water. In fact, any creature comfort that is lacking, you need only ask. I can’t promise to supply everything, but what I can get for you, I will. Shall we proceed?”

“Let me say something, if I may.”

There was silence. The man in the brown suit was studying my face. I couldn’t see him, but I knew what he was doing. Finally he said, “Of course you may, Inspector.” He stepped back, completely into the shadow.

“You have the wrong person.”

It was quiet for a moment, then an explosion of laughter echoed around the walls. “Really, Inspector,” the man in the brown suit said when he got back his breath. He let me see that he was drying his eyes with a handkerchief. “That is what everyone says, but you say it so matter-of-factly. One could almost believe it.”

“And you don’t?”

“I don’t have any basis for making a judgment. If you are completely the wrong person, we will establish that soon enough.” I never disliked the word “completely” so thoroughly as when the man in the brown suit said it. “If you are the wrong person, but only because circumstances have not yet made you the right person, we will establish that as well. And if you are the wrong person, but have tendencies that impel you in the very direction you say you have not taken, well, then let’s find out beforehand and save us both a great deal of trouble.”

“In other words . . .”

The man in the brown suit leaned forward slightly, another millimeter, enough so I would feel the space between us had diminished. “There are no ‘other words,’ Inspector. Those words you just heard me speak are the words which convey what I need you to know. Words are what we have, and we will use them with great respect, you and I, in our conversation. In particular, you will notice that I am precise in what I ask. A precise question deserves a precise answer.”

“Not always. What if you ask the wrong question?”

Again, from behind, I heard a growl. The man in the brown suit moved his legs, a gesture of annoyance, though I could not tell if it was at me or at the mastiff in the rear. He took back the millimeter we had gained. “I have no doubt you will correct the question, Inspector. I’m in no hurry to proceed, incidentally. I have all day, and all of the next day, and the next. We can sit here until summer, and it gets quite hot in these rooms in summer, believe me. The sooner we get started, the sooner we will be done. But it is all up to you.” He brushed something off his shoulder, perhaps a stray bit of unwanted light.

“I’ll tell you the truth, I’m very tired, and I don’t think clearly when my mind is clouded. Perhaps I can sleep for a few hours, and we can resume later.” I half expected to be hit again.

“Sleep deprivation is not a technique I practice, Inspector. Some people think it works wonders. I have never been convinced. Please sleep, if you wish. Perhaps you’d like a pill to help you?”

“I think not.”

The man in the brown suit sounded amused. “No, I didn’t suppose you would. Never mind.” He nodded his head. My arms were grabbed from behind and tied to the back of the chair. “Sleep well, Inspector.”

“Here, sitting up?”

“My goodness, yes, this is not a hotel.” I thought he moved into the light, but then the lamp clicked off, a fist came down on my neck, and if I dreamed anything while I was unconscious, I had forgotten it by the time I woke up.

5

The man in the brown suit was leaning against the wall when I opened my eyes. I couldn’t see his face in the shadow, but his posture was one of patience. There was nothing aggressive about it, not a hint of tension. That might have been soothing, except I sensed he had been watching me for some time, and being under observation put me on edge whether I was walking on the street or tied up in a chair. “You slept well, Inspector?” he asked solicitously.

The word “bastard” rose up through the fog in my mind. “I’ve slept better.”

“It isn’t easy to sleep sitting up that way, I realize. But it can be done. I did it, others have done it, I knew you could, too. In any event, while you slept, I was busy working.”

I looked down and was surprised to see my hands on my lap. They were completely numb.

“Feeling will return in the next few minutes, don’t worry. But don’t let them fall off your lap just yet, lest they detach themselves from your wrists and clatter to the floor. I don’t think we have the means to put them back.” He chuckled and let a few beams of light strike his lips. “I’m only joking.” There must be marks on the floor; I never saw anyone who could judge distance so precisely.

“You were working while I slept, and what were the results, if I may ask a question.”

“A good question, one I might ask if I were you. I discovered that you were right, you are the wrong person.”

“So, it’s good-bye, then.” I started to get up, but a hand behind me pulled me back onto the chair.

“You are the wrong person, Inspector, but that still leaves a question.”

“No, I don’t know who the right person is.”

“Ah. You don’t know who the right person is. Good, then we are a team; we are on the same side of ignorance. In that case, why don’t we establish some common perceptions? Maybe we can help each other.”

“That’s unlikely, but what did you have in mind?”

“First of all, I have a chart I’d like to show you.” He took a paper from his jacket pocket and unfolded it. After studying it for a moment, he sighed. “It has a number of blanks, troubling blank spots. I’m not yet sure where to put you, for example.” The chart came out of the darkness and was dropped on my lap. When I could move my arms and my fingers, I picked it up.

“You forgot my grandfather.”

“No, Inspector, I know you are the grandson of a Hero of the Revolution, but he died a long time ago, and if I don’t put a time limit on these charts, they get too big. That’s why your parents don’t appear, either. They died during the war; if I notated everyone connected to you who died during the war, we’d run short of paper. Let the dead rest in peace, Inspector; we have enough problems with the living.”

“Fine.” I glanced at the chart again. “It looks alright.”

“Actually, it errs on the thin side, but that’s deliberate. If I asked you to study it carefully, you might add one or two acquaintances and then think it was done. People have a tendency to feel they only know a few other people, but the interconnections over time are actually quite complex, especially for someone like you.”

“Someone like me,” I repeated. That did not have a good sound to it. My heart was starting to beat so loudly, I thought for sure both the man in the brown suit and the mastiff behind me could hear it. A bomb had been dropped; they were waiting for me to react. In so many words, I had been told that the shield my grandfather’s status had provided all these years was suddenly worthless. “Let the dead rest in peace,” the man in the brown suit had said. The only possible conclusion was that someone in the center had decided that my being raised by a Hero of the Revolution—and equally important, my knowledge of the old stories—had become a burden. But why now, all of a sudden? To most people, the appearance and disappearance of protection stemming from the Center seemed whimsical, shifting winds over an ocean of people treading water. But I knew that usually there was nothing whimsical about it. These shifts were almost always a reflection of something important, a failed policy or an unexpected event that the Center saw as a threat. Not a bank robbery, something bigger, much bigger.

“Your work brings you into contact with the sort of people who have, shall we say, threads reaching around the world.” The man in the brown suit let the words cover me, like a net. “Russians, for example. You often have business with Russians?”

Yakob seemed to be on everyone’s list. “Not really.”

“You speak Russian.”

“My grandfather spoke it sometimes.” I wasn’t going to let them discard my grandfather without a fight. “He learned it when he was working against the Japanese, and he taught me. He said if I was going to outsmart the Russians, I had to think like them, and if I was going to think like them, I had to know the language.”

“So, do you think like them?”

“Only when it’s necessary.”

“And when would that be?”

“Let’s stop dancing around the forest. I never met that stocking salesman before. I was looking for information that was germane to a case I’m investigating.” The man in brown must know about the bank robbery, but I wasn’t going to be the first to raise it. “I had a tip he might have what I needed.”

“Did he?”

“Good question. Maybe, yes.”

“Let me give you a piece of advice, Inspector. Stay away from that Russian.”

“Everyone tells me that.”

“Don’t pay attention to everyone, Inspector, just pay attention to me.”

I looked down at the chart and saw the name Chon Yu Mae, with the words “Gold Star” next to it. So, at least now I knew Miss Chon’s full name. She must have had a file after all, even if SSD couldn’t find it. Miss Chon’s name was connected by a dotted line to someone named Pang.

“May I ask a question?”

“Please do, Inspector.”

“Who is Pang?”

“The manager of the Club Blue.”

“Why is he connected to Miss Chon?”

“You didn’t know? They are very close. She spends a lot of time at his place, most nights, actually. It probably shouldn’t be a dotted line.”

No, I thought, it probably shouldn’t be. Yang’s name was on the chart, along with everyone else in the office, and even the chain of command up to the Minister. Also on the chart were my apartment neighbors, the man who fixed my bicycle tire, and my brother, whom I rarely saw. Off to the side, not connected to anyone, in a box drawn with red ink was Han Gun So—who, I supposed, was Lieutenant Han from SSD. Also, as the man said, there were a number of boxes left blank. One of them was labeled “Prague,” in a different handwriting.

“I need you to sign it, just so we know you looked at it carefully.”

I flexed my shoulders and wiggled each of my fingers. “I don’t think I can hold a pen yet. You realize, this might be easier if I knew what you were looking for.”

The man in the brown suit pulled out a pack of cigarettes. “Yes, and it would certainly be even easier if I knew what I was looking for.” He held out a cigarette. “Perhaps holding one of these will help your fingers, Inspector. Here, I can light it for you.”

I shook my head.

“Well, as you wish. I’m told you prefer wood to cigarettes. Odd. Any reason?”

Something told me this was about to take off in the wrong direction. I wiggled my fingers again.

“Alas,” he said, “we have no wood around here, nothing suitable, anyway. By the way, where do you get this wood you prefer, Inspector?” It was a curious question, but the man had not followed a particular line ever since he opened his mouth. Mostly he had been setting up, marking off our boundaries.

“Scrap wood; you run across it here and there if you are looking for it.” I didn’t think that would exhaust his interest in the subject.

“And you are, I assume, looking for scrap wood. All domestic wood, from our forests?”

“That I wouldn’t know. I don’t go out and chop things down, if that’s what you mean.”

“You never deal in foreign wood, of the Siberian variety, for example?”

“I’m not partial to Russian wood, no. In any case, forests don’t pay attention to national boundaries. There’s no such thing as Russian wood, or Chinese wood, or”—I paused a fraction while I considered whether this would get me on the wrong foot—“or Korean wood.”

“Forests do not follow boundaries; trees are not particularly concerned with ethnicity or social systems—is that what you are saying, Inspector? I should note that for future reference.”

“Do you want me to say whether I think some countries have better trees than we do?”

A low chuckle came out of the darkness. “What about ash, Inspector?” the man in the brown suit said after a moment. “I’m interested, how would you describe the wood from the ash tree?”

I ran through the possibilities. At least this was specific. Maybe he was getting at something, finally. “Strong, flexible, lots of uses. Very friendly tree, grows quickly. You can use it for furniture, veneer mostly.” I felt a tapping on my shoulder; I didn’t have to turn to know what it was. “It can be used for sticks and clubs of all sorts. You can beat someone with it. Most people will break before the stick does.”

He lit a cigarette. “And the Sogdian ash?”

I watched his fingers as they cupped the flame, so it would not light up his face.

“Couldn’t say. I never saw one.”

“Is that so? The Sogdian ash grows in Central Asia, Inspector. One of the largest remaining forests of these lovely trees”—a puff of smoke drifted into the light—“is in Kazakhstan.”

The hairs on the back of my neck prickled. So, we had arrived. “Is there a question in there for me, somewhere?” I could feel the club resting on my right shoulder. The man in the brown suit shook his head. The club moved to my left side.

“We don’t get a lot of Sogdian ash in this country, would you think?”

“I have no way of knowing.” The club bounced, not hard, but I could feel the effect down to my fingertips. I exhaled slowly. “I wouldn’t think there would be a lot of anything from Kazakhstan in this country.”

“No, you’re probably right, not much. But perhaps more than one might expect. By the way, have you ever been to Prague, Inspector?”

Another question out of nowhere; it might have jolted me more, but I’d seen the box on the chart. And he knew I’d seen it. “It says so on the chart. I must have been there at some point.”

The man in the brown suit clucked his tongue. “People forget many things,” he said, “but they know when they have been abroad, when they have held in their hands a passport that permits them to cross the border. Passports, by the way, are stamped, Inspector. Shall we have a look?”

“I didn’t say I’d forgotten.” I thought of Yakob’s passport stamps. Mine at least were real, even if they weren’t accurate. “It isn’t a mystery where I’ve been. It’s all a matter of record; every won I spent is accounted for.”

“No one doubts your financial probity, Inspector. Would you say there are thorough reports on everyone you met in Prague?”

“Of course.”

“Of course.” I didn’t care for his tone. “So when word reaches us that in Prague several years ago you met with a member of British intelligence, and there is nothing about that in your trip report, we can assume . . . well, what can we assume, Inspector?”

I contemplated the situation. The mantle of my grandfather’s protection was in grave doubt. Now they were suggesting I was a traitor. Only the British knew I had met a man who called himself Richie Molloy in Prague, that we had talked for a few hours, that I had given him information on a colonel from the Military Security Command who had been responsible for many deaths and whom I was determined to destroy. If the man in the brown suit had heard even faint echoes about the meeting, it could only be because the British wanted him to hear it. And they must have wanted it because they knew that, when word got to the right people in Pyongyang, I would be squeezed. Then, they hoped in their European way, I would come running to them. They were wrong, of course. I wouldn’t come over to them. But unless I convinced the man in the brown suit it was false information, I would probably never get a chance to tell the British to fuck themselves, which at the moment I fervently wanted to do. The ash club tapped me on the hip bone. The pain radiated down to my leg and up into my chest. I gasped for air.

“Prague, Inspector, that was my question.”

“Well, there won’t be any answers if that club touches me again.”

The man in the brown suit waited.

“I need a drink of water.”

He nodded from the shadows, and a glass was held in front of me. I took a swallow, shook my head to clear my thoughts. “I was in Prague on a courier run for my ministry. There are reports in the file describing everyone I met. The embassy had someone with me the whole time. You can probably check that in their logs. If I had disappeared for even a few minutes, it would have been noted.” The embassy had lost track of me for half a night, but they didn’t dare admit it. They didn’t care; I was just another visitor, and they didn’t want to use their funds to look after me. But I didn’t have to tell that to the man in brown; either he already knew it, or he didn’t.

“I think we are getting somewhere, wouldn’t you say, Inspector? Perhaps it’s time for a break. You must be fatigued.”

Only an interrogator with bad things in mind would say “fatigued.” I wanted to get this over and, if it was still possible, go home. “I’m wide-awake. There’s no reason to take a break, though if there is a toilet nearby, I could use it.” My hip ached; I needed to walk, maybe splash some water on my face, get out of the suffocating gloom of this room.

“Of course, of course.” The man in the brown suit nodded.

6

When I got back and sat down, I couldn’t tell if the man in the brown suit was in the room. It was completely silent; I couldn’t even hear my own breathing. His voice came out of nowhere. “Well, we’ve established a few useful things, but there remain a few questions.”

“I’m ready.”

It was a long list, and they came at me from what seemed like every direction. He refused to stand in one spot. Maybe he thought it would disorient me; maybe he was agitated and felt the need to pace. Abruptly, he stopped. “At this point, Inspector, you should have something to eat, while I do some more checking.”

I was exhausted and still in pain. Food was not on my mind. Prague hadn’t come up again, not directly, not implicitly, not even in an echo or a reflection. It had seemingly dropped down a well, but I knew it was not going to be erased from that chart. Something like that is never erased. They would keep it in my file until I had been dead so long that there was no one who would remember my face.

“Since we’re colleagues now”—I turned in the direction of his voice—“perhaps I could go to sleep. I mean, natural sleep, blissful, restful, restoring, lying down somewhere. You know, knitting the raveled sleeve.”

“Good, Shakespeare. Good. And why not? Sleep will do you good. Consider this your room, and all that it contains at your disposal.” The room, as far as I could tell, was bare except for the lamp and the chair I sat on. “The concrete is not so comfortable; we’ll have to look for a pad. I know we have blankets, somewhere.” He was suddenly fussy, the solicitous innkeeper, and judging from the way his voice moved, he had resumed pacing slowly back and forth in front of me. “We don’t usually entertain guests overnight, you see.” From out of the shadows to my left, the man in the brown suit walked toward me with his arm extended. First his hand, then all of him was in the light. He was tall, a little stooped; even in the lamplight, he had a sallow face. Brown was not a good color for him. We shook hands; he smiled in an odd way, then limped toward the door. Before he reached it, he turned. “Ah, one thing. What do you know about the clerks at the Gold Star Bank?”

“Nothing.” If he thought I would let down my guard when I saw him about to leave, he was mistaken. Even as tired as I was, my guard would never get that far down.

“You were following one of them,” he said. It was incredible to me, how much detail he had at his fingertips.

“Yes, but I lost her.”

“Strange. An experienced person like yourself, you lost her? Pity.” He put his hands in his pockets and walked outside. I heard the ash club tap on the floor behind me, then a footstep; the door in the back of the room opened, and I was alone.

7

After the interrogation, they let me sleep a few hours. When they woke me, the first thing they asked was if I was alright. My shoulder hurt; my hip hurt. “Fine,” I said. They asked if I wanted a doctor to look at me. I told them no, and they had me sign a form that said I’d refused the offer. They said that I was free to go and that they would drop me off where I wanted. “Maybe a restaurant near my office.” They said it was my choice; they helped me up, and we went to a car parked outside. It was night. I didn’t know for sure how long I’d been there; I couldn’t even remember where I had been when they picked me up. We drove for about thirty minutes, from somewhere out in the country. It was cloudy and very dark, and it wasn’t until we finally got on a road I recognized that I realized we were coming into the city from the east. The car stopped; the man in the front seat beside the driver turned and said we were at the restaurant I’d requested. I could get whatever I wanted to eat. They’d pay for it, he said. He imparted this information morosely, as if he didn’t agree with the practice but hadn’t been consulted.

“Well, then,” I said, “thanks again for everything.” I got out with difficulty. I’d barely closed the door when the car pulled away.

The restaurant was half full. No one looked up when I dragged myself across the room. I took a table against the wall, so I could lean back and take some strain off my shoulder. After something to eat and a drink, I’d go home to sleep. In the morning, I’d start full bore on the case, no more half measures, no more wondering what its importance was, or to whom. It was vitally important, above all to me. I still didn’t know whose toes I’d stepped on, or even if that was the right part of the anatomy. But it was clear I couldn’t back off. If I solved it—and it was going to end up involving more than a bank robbery, that I knew—the odds were I wouldn’t have to go back to that room with the ash club. Which would be good, because if I did have to go back, the next time they sat me in that chair, I might not stand up again. I closed my eyes, and when I opened them, the man in the brown suit was standing beside me.

“May I join you, Inspector?” What a silly question. Of course the man could join me. From here on out, he practically owned me. It was clear he could haul me back whenever it suited him, as long as he thought I knew something about whatever it was that was such a threat to someone at the center. I absolutely didn’t want to sit in that darkness again. Better if he came to visit me, someplace I could see his eyes. “I was saving it for a beautiful woman, but she didn’t show up. So, please.” I nodded toward the chair opposite me.

The man smiled. There was nothing menacing in it. His face had taken on more color. This close, in the light, I could see he had an intelligent manner. “No hard feelings, I hope, Inspector. We checked, we double-checked, we decided you were not the man we were after. What can I say? You’ll accept my apology, surely. Let me buy you a drink.”

The last thing in the world I wanted was to let him buy me a drink. “Of course, I would be honored.”

What shall we have for such an occasion? Something out of the ordinary, I think. They probably have something they shouldn’t, hidden away in the rear. These places always do. Excuse me.” He got up and limped to a door at the back of the room, knocked once, then turned the handle and walked in. A minute or so later, he emerged with a bottle in his hand. “This is good Scotch,” he said. “Real Scotch. Not that colored water everyone drinks.” The waitress brought over two glasses. “Better without ice.” He poured some into my glass and then poured his own. After he held up his glass to the light, he looked at mine and laughed. “Here’s to friendship, Inspector, wherever we find it.”

The rest of the evening came out of the bottle. We drank until I couldn’t sit up straight, but the more he drank, the more dignified he seemed to become. Some people get sloppy when they drink; not him. Eventually, he asked if I wanted to know why he limped. I shrugged. “Of course you do, Inspector. Something for you to think about. Learn a lesson.”

He had been sentenced to a labor camp as a young man, a fifteen-year sentence for not reporting a conversation with a visiting Hungarian. “My elder sister had been sent to Budapest during the war; they thought she was an orphan, and the Hungarians took her in along with hundreds of others. She was there for several years, learned Hungarian, went to school, almost married a Hungarian man, but something happened and she finally came back to teach. She took ill one day and a week later was dead. It was a shock, let me tell you.”

Though I was drunk, I watched his every move, one step removed, as if I were watching myself observing him. He wasn’t the interrogator anymore, no trace of it. He sat across from me, dignified and composed, in contrast to my inability to keep my head upright. I sloshed my drink. He drank his with a careful flourish. Each time he raised the glass, it began a ritual, an elaborate code, a tribal ceremony that had a beginning, a middle, and an end. The glass went up to his mouth, he took a small sip, then lifted the glass slightly before it began a downward arc, his sleeve seemed to billow, his elbow ticked out an elegant degree or so, and as the glass settled onto the table, he smacked his lips, once.

He never gestured when he spoke, except when he was drinking. At first I assumed it was the alcohol, but then I realized it was the glass in his hand. He used the glass to point, to emphasize an argument, to indicate a joke was coming or had just been made. I could tell from the way he did this that the size of the glass made no difference, nor its shape. The glass didn’t have to be full. But it couldn’t be empty. He never gestured with an empty glass.

As an interrogator, the man in the brown suit was in complete control. He sent that message in a way that you understood, precisely, without any doubt. When he asked a question, you were forced to concentrate on his voice. That was why he stood in shadow. No distractions, no physical cues, no watching his hands or even the slightest play of emotion around the lips, unless that’s what he wanted you to see. No eye contact, only his words. But what had begun as technique had taken over completely. He was left with this and this alone—only the glass in his hand freed him.

He took a sip, waved the glass in my direction, then started it again on its journey to the table. “After she died, I wanted to thank the Hungarians, but I didn’t know how to do it, so I hung around outside their embassy. I saw someone at the corner, a Westerner. I walked over and asked him if he understood Korean. He said he did, that he was Hungarian and could carry on a conversation if I didn’t speak too fast. I told him I was grateful to the Hungarian people for taking care of my sister, that she had spoken highly of them and their country, and that I hoped to be able to repay the debt. He smiled and said if I came back to this corner the next afternoon, at the same time, he would drive by and pick me up.” The glass was empty; he pushed it aside and composed himself. Sitting very still, he continued, “The next day when I got to the corner, a security man emerged from behind a tree. He said I was to come with him. They said the foreigner I had talked to was a Hungarian spy, and that I had disgraced the country. I wrote a confession. I was shaken, believe me. They put me in the back of a truck with ten other young men, and a woman who was weeping, and we drove off to a camp in the mountains.” He stopped talking, just stopped, as if he had run out of words.

“Bad luck,” I said softly.

Anyone else might have laughed, or roared in protest, or sighed. He sat motionless. Finally he put his fingers around his glass and tipped it back and forth. “When I got out I was a little older, thinner, and had this limp. Ash, the guards carried clubs made of ash. Mostly they kept order by shouting at us and waving the clubs. But one of the guards took an instant dislike to me, no reason, he just did. He tried everything he could to kill me. One day he beat me so hard his club broke. I couldn’t move for a month. I finally healed, all except for my leg. Six years into my sentence, a car drove up to the gate, a colonel got out, and they hustled me over to him. He asked if I was well, I said I was. He asked if I had been fed, I said I had. He told me I had been wrongly sentenced, that the vermin responsible had been punished, and that I was now free to serve the people. He shook my hand, looked around at the other prisoners, and led me out the gate to his car.”

“Luck changes.” I could hear I was mumbling, but it wasn’t my main concern. By now I couldn’t keep my eyes open.

“That’s how things happened in the old days, Inspector. In the old days, you wouldn’t be here right now.”

In a sudden spurt of clarity, I sat up. “You been watching me long? I saw you on the train, you were watching me.”

He moved back his chair. “Put your head on the table and sleep a little. I’m sure we’ll meet again.” I didn’t see him leave, but I heard the irregular gait of his footsteps disappear into the long night.

8

“You’re back.” Min put down the newspaper he wasn’t reading. He stood up and moved around his desk toward me. “Are you alright?”

“Fine.”

“We were worried. You didn’t show up for work, no one knew where you were. I called the Ministry, they called around. SSD said they had no idea where you were, that they didn’t want you for anything. They said they’d check. A few hours later they got back in touch. They said you were out of the system.” Min put his hands up, in a gesture of helplessness. He swallowed hard. “ ‘Out of the system’—what a term. It sounds like a piece of meat that dropped off the table.” Min looked closely at me. “You sure you’re alright?”

“I already told you, I’m fine. They finally figured out they had the wrong person. Made friends with me, took me out for a drink afterward.”

“Sure, I know, you don’t have to talk about it, probably shouldn’t. But the Minister doesn’t like it when they snatch his people like this. We’ll have to send something in, a piece of paper or something saying you’ve reported back on duty. I’ll call and tell them you’re here.” Min picked up the phone.

“Let’s wait a while, okay? Give me a few minutes to get my head clear. Why don’t we review things, just go over what we know. That Blue Paper on Yang, has there been any follow-up?”

“Inspector, you’re in no shape to review anything, and frankly I’m not in the mood.” He put the phone back down. “You shouldn’t even be here. Go home, get some rest.”

“There isn’t time for that. Look, a new unit is out there. First Yang spots them nosing around my apartment, then I get the feeling I’m being watched out on the street, and then I get hauled in.”

“Where? SSD wouldn’t dare do it. Who?”

“I don’t have any idea. I don’t even remember being picked up.”

“They beat you?”

“No, I drank too much.”

“That’s okay, you don’t have to talk about it.” Min started to pick up the phone again. “They hurt your shoulder, didn’t they?”

“It’s not so bad.” He was right, this wasn’t a good time to review. Lying down would be better.

“You look like a man who doesn’t want to move his arm if he can avoid it, Inspector. And your left hand is odd. Like the blood isn’t getting there in normal fashion. Maybe you should see the doctor at the Ministry. I’ll call and tell him you’re coming.”

“No, he’ll make a record of it. Just let this go. I know a doctor. Really, it wasn’t so bad.” I nodded toward a chair. “You mind if I sit for a minute?”

“Sure, sit. Let me get you some tea.” Min hurried out of the room before I could stop him. I put my head against the wall and closed my eyes. My shoulder did hurt now, worse than last night. Maybe I’d go home for the rest of the day.

“Here, it’s good tea. Yang brought in a package, said he got it somewhere. I don’t know.” Min held out the cup, changed his mind, and put it down on his desk. “Forget the damned tea, Inspector; get to a doctor, would you? You won’t be a lot of use to me if you end up having only one arm.” He took a quick step to his file cabinet, opened a drawer, and then slammed it shut. “Bastards.” He stood with his back to me for a moment, then turned around. “They really did that? Apologized, then took you out for a drink, after doing that?” He nodded toward my shoulder. “Get it fixed, Inspector. Don’t come back until you do.”

9

The next day I stayed home and tried to sleep. The doctor at the morgue had given me four pain pills. “It’s all I have,” she said. “Cut them in half, in quarters if you can. Take as little as you need so they’ll last. It’s not dislocated, nothing’s broken, though they could have shattered the collarbone or severed a nerve. It could have crippled you for life. It’s bad enough that the bruise is so deep. You’ll be in pain for a week, at least a week.” She helped me back into my shirt. “Good thing you’re right-handed.”

“They knew it.”

“Oh.” She considered this. “Well, that’s something, I suppose.” Her voice faltered, and then she snapped it back where it belonged. “Sleep as much as you can. Don’t move your shoulder around for a couple of days, then try to flex so it doesn’t get stiff. If you can put some heat on it, that would be good. Maybe heat up a brick and wrap it in cloth, anything like that. When you’re taking these pills, don’t drink any alcohol. Not a drop. Come back in a week. And try to keep moving your fingers.” She walked me to the door. “Do you have anyone who can help out for the next few days? Maybe cook a meal, or help you wash?”

“No. I can manage.”

“I doubt it, but we’ll see.”

“Thanks. I was never here.”

“No, you weren’t.” She gave me a half smile. “Maybe none of us are.”

10

The pills made me jumpy, or maybe I was already jumpy because of how the man in the brown suit had sidestepped my question about why he had been watching me on the train. There could only be one reason he wouldn’t answer the question—he wasn’t finished with me. I worried with that through the haze of the pills, then the haze got deeper and the worry softened into a white cloud that drifted away. It was the best I’d felt in a long time, watching that cloud. I must have been dozing when there was a knock on the door. Getting up was difficult; I could only use one arm. “Just a minute.”

When I opened the door, it was Miss Chon. I was surprised and irritated. “You shouldn’t be here. One of us is going to get the other one in trouble. I already told you, you’re a suspect. Now I’m a suspect, again.”

“A fine welcome, Inspector. In Kazakhstan, we invite visitors in and offer them a piece of fruit. And if we’re both suspects, wouldn’t it be strange if we didn’t get together?”

“I don’t have any fruit.”

She looked past me into the room. “You don’t seem to have much of anything. I thought you were fooling when you said you didn’t have any chairs. You live like a hermit!” Her fingers touched my arm. “I heard.”

“You didn’t hear anything, and you’re about to go away.” I backed up a few steps, sank down on my knees, and then rolled onto my side on my blanket. “How did you get past the old lady at the entrance?”

“I’m a bank manager, Inspector. My job is to talk people into things they don’t think they want, and out of things they do. She didn’t put up much of a fight, especially after I told her I was worried about you. She said people here have been wondering what’s wrong.” Miss Chon stepped tentatively into the room. She had on a long coat that was cinched around her waist. “I’ve been calling and calling you at your office. Whoever answered said you weren’t there and that you don’t have a phone at home, not in your room, anyway. That’s all they’d say.”

“Good, that’s all they’re supposed to say, and anyway it’s true. Some people have phones. I don’t want one. It would only ring at the wrong moment.”

She laughed, and my shoulder stopped hurting for a few seconds. “Oh, and when would that be?”

“When I’m not here, when I’m here, anytime at all.” Sometimes, they say, laughter stays in a room, but it didn’t in mine. It faded quickly, as if it wanted to get out of there as soon as it could. “I told you the other night, I’m not a social creature, I’m antisocial. Right now, I’m particularly antisocial. When I throw a party, I’ll send you an invitation. I need to sleep.” I closed my eyes. The door slammed before I managed to say, “Thank you for coming.”

11

Min put me outside for a few days, said I needed exercise and fresh air. “Stay away from the office,” he said, “I mean it.” He couldn’t give me any leave, but this was nearly as good. I didn’t want to be out of the office, but I still couldn’t think straight because of the pills and the pain. The one thought that marched around in the haze in my head was Miss Chon. Every time I blinked my eyes, she was standing at my door, and I wondered why I didn’t have any fruit. I tried to force myself to forget the fruit and concentrate on why she had come to my place. Foreigners didn’t do that; they stayed in their hotel rooms, or somewhere. So what was she doing at my room?

I thought of an answer, but it disappeared in a burst of pain from my shoulder and I gave up thinking about anything. Midmorning, while I was sitting on some steps watching the sunlight as it came through the new leaves of the trees, an army guard marched over with an old man. “He’s causing trouble.” He handed me a piece of paper. “Get him out of my area.” The guard was young; the collar on his shirt was too big. But he was serious about his job. He gave me a serious frown and walked away.

I stood up. “You heard the fellow. He said you’re a troublemaker, Grandfather. Are you?”

The old man looked at the ground when he spoke. “You’ll believe what you want.”

We were standing on the sidewalk. Nobody stared directly at us as they walked by, but they all slowed, as if the thin, bent figure were a dead animal on the road. I skimmed the paper the guard had handed me. “Don’t let’s make this complicated. This is a list of complaints against you.” I held it up for him to see. “It’s a long list. You’re lucky it got to me before it went to someone else.”

He looked up at that. I thought he had the eyes of an old dragon, powerful eyes, smoldering for centuries with indignation. “I’ve not bothered anyone in this city,” he said. “No one has cause to complain. I live my own life. I follow the rules. I speak the words. If this generates complaints, then the Leader himself is as guilty as I am.”

“How about we lower our sights for the moment and just go over the list, shall we?” I looked around to make sure he hadn’t been overheard. “Leave other people out of it, if you know what I mean. We’ll make a few notations, maybe close the file and get on with our lives. It might be that easy.” I went down the list with my finger until I found something that could be dealt with in a simple word or two. “It says here you told a group of people at a restaurant that food prices were too high. True?”

“You have to ask me? Don’t you buy food, or do they just give it away in this city?”

“I’ll take that as a yes. And you reportedly said that prices are high because farmers can’t plant what they want.”

“There isn’t a farmer doesn’t know that, and half of them would tell you if you asked.”

“I’m just going down the list, Grandfather. Why should I trust the farmers to plant the right thing? Why wouldn’t they plant what is easiest to grow?”

“Country people ain’t lazy.” He held up his hands. “This is how we live, with these. Not a bunch of merchants reselling the sweat of someone else’s labor.”

“So that’s it. A communist, are you?”

“Is that against the law nowadays?”

I folded up the list of complaints and put it in my pocket. “You’re in the capital, my old friend. What farmers say in the fields among themselves can get taken the wrong way by people in a restaurant.”

“That’s not my concern.”

“Well, it better become your concern, because the next time your name gets on a list, it won’t be a pleasant conversation. Do I make myself clear?”

“Is that a threat? Maybe the last person you bullied crawled away, but you won’t get that from me. I’m a simple man. I tell a simple truth.”

“Listen to me, the truth is too far away for either of us. Don’t go looking for it. I’m just giving you some advice. If you can’t follow it, then keep your mouth shut.”

“And if I don’t?”

“Where are you from?”

“Close by Kyonghung. Over that way.” He waved vaguely in the direction of the East Sea, a few hundred kilometers away.

“Who gave you permission to leave North Hamgyong and come all the way across the country?”

“I did.”

I stared at him. “You? You gave yourself permission? You can’t do that.”

“And why can’t I? General Yi did. Have you forgotten, or did you never know?”

“Six hundred years ago, they didn’t have the same rules we do.”

“And maybe there is a lesson in that.” He looked at me calmly. It was a simple observation.

“Yi Song Gye was at the head of an army when he marched into town. I expect he had someone along to advise him on what to say in restaurants. Well, I’m looking, and I’m not seeing anyone but you. You can’t do these things; you just can’t give yourself permission to travel across the country. That much I know.”

“But I did. I’m standing here, ain’t I?” He gestured broadly at the scene around him. “Who fought for this during the war? Somewhere near this place, there were hardly any streets left, no buildings, trees all broken, the bombing was so bad you couldn’t breathe the air. Dust and bones all mixed together. You wouldn’t know that to look at things now. Did I or didn’t I nearly die for this place?”

I said nothing.

“Well, did I or didn’t I? How can anyone keep me from coming back here? Do I need permission to visit the place where I nearly died a hundred times? Do you think country people are simple? Do you think we don’t understand?”

“We’re going in circles, Grandfather. Someone is going to notice you are missing at home; some nosy neighbor will wonder where you have gone off to. Let’s get you back where you belong.”

“When I’m ready, if I’m ready, I’ll say so. I’ll go back the same way I came, and if anyone doesn’t like it, they can kiss my hind end.”

“Here’s what I’m going to do.” I took out my wallet and peeled off a few bills, euros and dollars. “This is money for the train back home. There’s enough for a few overpriced meals, and since I’m paying, you don’t get to comment on the cost of food. Frankly, I don’t think you’ll make it to Hoeryong without running into someone who has no tolerance for people without papers. But that is your business, not mine. Get out of town. And try to remember, you’re not General Yi.” I studied the old dragon’s eyes. “Though I’m sure he would have wanted you on his side.”