Chapter One

I arrived at the Koryo twenty minutes early. The place was deserted except for a few security types and the doorman, so I stood around minding my own business. On the second-floor balcony, a waitress leaned against the railing, looking down into the lobby. At first I thought she might be waiting for someone, but there wasn’t any concentration in the way she stood or idly scanned the room. It wasn’t as if she was relaxed; it was more like she was longing for something but wasn’t sure what. When her eye finally caught mine, she looked away quickly, but I knew her glance would sweep back. I didn’t recognize her as part of the normal staff; probably she was new. Sweet looking, even from a distance, she had an innocent air, a country girl who could tell a joke and mean nothing by it. I smiled when she looked my way again. She smiled back; then someone must have said something, because she covered her mouth and retreated into the shadows. In her place, a tall hotel security man appeared. He gave me a sour look, but it wasn’t anything personal, just his normal expression. I winked at him and moved off to one of the benches so I could wait for Boswell. We were supposed to meet at six o’clock for dinner, though I wasn’t hungry.

A group of well-dressed Europeans made their way past the doorman. They looked around the lobby, the women with amused smiles, the men with a touch of contempt. One of the men said something to the others, and they all laughed unpleasantly. If they walked over and sat down near me, I would have to move. I didn’t want to have to listen to snide observations, and I especially didn’t want to have to answer any questions. Foreigners usually asked about the crops, as if I followed that sort of thing. It was Monday, the wrong day for anyone to be arriving by plane, and none of them were wearing travel clothes. I figured they had already been here for a few days; maybe that was why their guide was nowhere in sight, probably suffering from nervous exhaustion.

The man who had made the others laugh was thin. He looked even thinner because of the way his suit was cut. The jacket was over his shoulders, like a gray cape; a pair of glasses hung on a chain around his neck, where they bumped against his chest as he strolled toward the front desk, then toward the restaurant in the back, shaking his head slightly, calling to the others. You might have thought he was in a zoo, the way he pointed. I could see the girl behind the money-changing counter look down and pretend to concentrate on something else when he approached. It did no good; the man stopped and pulled out his wallet. He put several euro bills on the counter and summoned her, in bad Chinese. She looked at him blankly, though she knew perfectly well what he’d said. I checked my watch. These people were gawking as if they hadn’t seen the lobby before. They must be staying at one of the other hotels, maybe the Potang-gang, and were just crawling around the Koryo for laughs. If Boswell didn’t show up in the next thirty seconds, I was going to get up and leave. He could have dinner by himself, or with the cape-man and his friends.

After the run-in with the traffic cop, I had taken Boswell to Club Blue. I told him it was so we could have a drink together, but really I needed to see the tough bartender again. I wasn’t happy about having Boswell along, but there was no way to get rid of him. The tough bartender wasn’t there anymore. And the old owner had already been replaced, which was a surprise. I thought he might be roughed up a little but then crawl back, not that he’d vanish. The new bartender wasn’t talkative. The new owner wouldn’t stop. He pretended to be glad to see us and shook Boswell’s hand four or five times, until Boswell put it in his coat pocket and kept it there until we got back to the car. I didn’t think Miss Chon would be attracted to the new owner. His shoulders weren’t much to look at.

As we were climbing the stairs, Boswell asked me if there was much trouble at these sorts of clubs. I said no, nothing besides a stabbing not long ago. He pretended not to be interested. “Happens all the time, Inspector,” he said. “Drunken patrons in a scuffle, am I right?” Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw a warning flag.

The wait at the hotel was getting long. Just as I decided to leave, Boswell came out of the elevator on the second floor, waved curtly to me from the balcony, and rode down the escalator to the lobby.

“Evening, Inspector. Shall we dine?” He looked at the cape-man with distaste. “That fellow should either put on his damned jacket or take it off.”

This startled me. “I thought you would be glad to see your countrymen.”

“They’re not my countrymen, they’re Italians. What do you suppose they want here?”

I ignored the question; how could I know what they wanted? It was like asking me about crops. “Where would you like to go to dinner, Superintendent?”

We were speaking in English, and the cape-man turned to observe us. He adjusted his coat and perched his glasses on his long nose. He glared at Boswell, as if our having a normal conversation broke some sort of unwritten rule. Their guide probably went to her room and drank every night.

Boswell took my arm and started leading me away. “What’s wrong with this place for dinner? They have a dining room here.”

“Here?” I knew the hotel had a dining room, I had eaten in it. But the Ministry didn’t like us to use it for entertaining guests, foreign or domestic.

“A problem? What’s the matter, doesn’t it fit with your Ministry’s guidelines?”

“I just thought you’d like to go out somewhere, that’s all. There are a few new places that visitors seem to enjoy.” I wouldn’t have minded ending up at the all-night foreigners’ restaurant, just to see the look on the lady in the silk dress as she walked us to our table. This time, I wouldn’t sit with my back to the door.

“I’m tired.” Boswell was slouching, as if to emphasize the point. It wasn’t a posture that fit him very well; it made him look like an oak tree in love with a dandelion. “I don’t want anything with singing or dancing. Let’s just eat here, Inspector. At breakfast, I peeked at the dinner menu. They have pot roast, can you believe it?” If the menu said so, I believed it, though I didn’t know how good it would be. Beef was tough; unless it was in a soup or grilled in little chunks, I couldn’t see why foreigners thought so much of it. “Anyway”—Boswell had dropped my arm and was walking ahead of me, his posture much restored by the chance to be sarcastic—“I can’t resist restaurants with mirrored ceilings.”

At dinner, our waitress was the same girl I’d spotted on the balcony. She pretended not to remember me. And from the way she moved, I could see she was nervous, just out of training and worried because she knew every step she took was being observed by her supervisor, an older woman who stood off to the side. Her hand shook when she filled the small glasses in front of us with liquor. A tiny bit overflowed, spilling onto the tablecloth. It was nothing, no one could have noticed, but it was not what she meant to do, not what she wanted. Her eyes were so pained that for a moment I thought she might faint. Boswell paid no attention. He downed the glass in a gulp, then sat and chewed in silence. I asked him how the food was; he only nodded. Once or twice he appeared to gather his thoughts, and I thought he was about to say something but nothing came of it.

“Maybe we should have gone somewhere else,” I said at last. He said nothing. “Something the matter?” I asked. It was fine with me not to carry on a conversation about nothing, but this was getting awkward. “If something is wrong with the food, we can tell the waitress.” It passed through my mind that the girl might be transfixed, actually physically incapacitated, if we complained to her about the food. “I don’t know pot roast, but my soup is not bad. Maybe you should try some. Here.” I pushed the bowl toward him.

Boswell put his fork down, then his knife. He looked at them intently for a moment, then at his plate, and finally, as if it cost him to do so, at me. “Have you never sat in silence, Inspector? It is not a mean thing to do. How can I think if someone is talking all the time?”

When the meal was over, he folded his napkin and left the table without a word. I sat for a while by myself, half expecting the man in the brown suit to show up, but no one else came into the dining room, so I finished my soup and went home. Something was eating Boswell, and it wasn’t the pot roast.

2

The next morning after I checked in at the office, I went for a walk. Min wouldn’t be in until late. This was his regular day for meetings at the Ministry. Boswell could sit alone in his room for a few hours in silence and think; for all I cared, he could sit there the whole day. The whole damned day. I had some thinking to do, too. I looked through my desk drawer for a piece of wood to keep me company. I found a piece of acacia and put it in my pocket. Acacia knew how to mind its own business and let a person think.

Boswell’s moodiness at dinner still irked me. I hadn’t ever dined with a Scotsman, but as far as I knew, there was a level of politeness that civilized peoples maintain while eating together. Boswell was concerned about something, pressured. More pressure, first Min, then me, now Boswell. Everyone was feeling it. Something about Club Blue had set him off, especially the stabbing.

Club Blue seemed to set a lot of people off, even Miss Chon. I had formed a strong impression of her the first time I went into the bank—apart from her waist, she struck me as haughty, someone used to ordering people around, and yet there was this odd gap. Yes, she was a very competent woman, about as self-assured as I’d ever seen. In that case, why wouldn’t she admit she was close to the owner of Club Blue? You’d have thought she’d want to wave it in front of my nose, how she had bagged those big shoulders. I doubted if banking practice forbade sleeping with the customers. She must know by now he was missing and be worried, unless she knew where he was. Then it came to me, the one thing that stood out now that I thought about it—and it was as if a big bell was booming next to my ear. Why I hadn’t heard it before, I couldn’t say. She didn’t seem off balance. She hadn’t once complained to me about how things were done here. The janitor moved the desk, he didn’t move the desk, the desk suddenly disappeared, all fine by her. The fussing that night at the restaurant about the desk, it was an act. She wasn’t worried, because she wasn’t surprised. I stopped. She even knew that the name of my ministry had been changed from Public Security to People’s Security. That was more than ten years ago. How the hell would she have known that?

I walked a little farther, trying to tickle my subconscious into action, but it seemed otherwise occupied and silent. It must have been preoccupied with the group of Italians, because when I looked up, I found myself heading toward the Potang-gang Hotel. A woman was waiting at the entrance to the park that sits beside the Potang River. The trees in the park were in leaf, fresh green, delicate in the sunlight. The shadows were still dainty, not like the ponderous shade that trees manufacture late in the summer. I thought I’d sit in the park for a while and let my thoughts roam, but something about the woman caught my attention. She was standing perfectly still. You might have thought she was a statue except that her ponytail stirred slightly in the breeze. So did the belt on her coat, where it hung down in front. Unlike the waitress at the Koryo Hotel, this woman was waiting for someone. You could tell she wasn’t looking forward to the meeting. If the way she had set her feet meant anything, she was becoming more impatient by the minute. Finally, she glanced at her watch, looked back up along the street, and then walked down the path to the river. Something about the way she moved made me follow. It took a moment to realize this was the bank clerk I’d lost in the underpass. In the dark, I never had a good look at her face, and now, with a ponytail, her chin wasn’t so sharp. Faces sometimes fool me. But I never mistake the way someone looks from behind, the way someone walks. If you follow enough people, pretty soon you stop looking at faces anyway. Hips and heels, those are the signatures.

The bank clerk walked along the river. Without her high heels, she took longer, more confident steps. This time I wasn’t going to let her out of my sight. A few blocks later, she turned into a building with empty stores at ground level. I relaxed, waiting across the street until she came out. There were no entrances in the back. This was my section of town, I knew it inside out, and I had made a study of buildings that had rear entrances that couldn’t be seen from the street. This wasn’t one of them.

An elderly man appeared in the same doorway where the clerk had entered. Just for a moment he stepped outside and seemed to enjoy the air. Then he glanced in my direction and disappeared back inside, but not before I noticed that his feet turned out. I took another look at the building. There was nothing unusual, except maybe that the curtains on the second floor drew back slightly for a moment and then closed again. That and the fact it was one of the buildings in the block Boswell had insisted we stop and look at more closely. He had said he didn’t like the shadows. Maybe he didn’t, or maybe he had just wanted to make sure he saw the building.

My phone rang; that ridiculous tune I couldn’t get rid of blasted from my back pocket down the entire block. Perfect, absolutely perfect, I thought. “Yeah?”

“Fine greeting, Inspector. Good communication skills. Let’s work on that, can we?”

“Come on, Min, I’m in the middle of surveillance, or at least I was until this phone alerted everyone in the neighborhood to my presence. I’m not in a chatty mood.”

“Good, good, no need to chat. Remember your friend the nightclub owner? The one with the silk stockings? His body is floating in a river up in the hills. Communications with the patrol on the scene aren’t good, but through the static it sounded like maybe his head was bashed in. Apparently, there was plenty of identification in his pocket, so whoever did it must have wanted to make sure he was identified. According to the leader of the patrol, it looks like he’s been in the water for two days, maybe longer.”

“Maybe he just slipped and fell. Accidents do happen, Min.” The man had been missing for two weeks, and he wasn’t on vacation, hiking around the countryside. Ending up in a river was no accident, but there was no sense in saying so to Min. He’d only complain that I hadn’t told him sooner.

“No, Inspector, these country patrols may not be very smart, but they can usually tell an accident from a homicide. They said it was murder.”

“Well, if it’s murder, it’s murder, but it’s not in my territory.”

“It’s your case, and he was one of your suspects, wasn’t he?”

“He wasn’t a suspect.” I thought of Miss Chon. When was the last time she saw him? “His bar might have been mixed up in it somehow, but he didn’t seem the type to rob a bank. His connections were too good for anything rough like that.”

“No time to argue, Inspector. Come on back here, pick up the initial scene report that was phoned in, get the superintendent from the hotel, then go take a look. Whatever you do, keep the Scotsman out of town for a few hours. SSD called just after we got the news; they must have heard almost the same time we did. They told me they wanted the Scotsman out of the way. They were clear on that.”

“Who did you talk to?”

“Han.”

“Did his phone click?”

There was a prolonged silence.

“Never mind,” I said, “forget I asked. Why don’t we just ignore him?”

“Not this time.” The strain was back in Min’s voice. “When I was at the Ministry this morning, I got severe looks, a lot of them. Something is up, and I’m not going to be under it when it comes back down. I also checked with some people I know. Han is a comer; he’s under someone’s wing, they said, though that’s all they would say. I got the feeling that if we get on his bad side today, he’ll eat our livers tomorrow.”

“He’ll choke on a feather long before that, Min. You worry too much.”

“You want to stand there and argue, or will you do as I ask?” Min wasn’t giving me an order, he was pleading. “One more thing. Little Li dropped off a report he’d been working on all night.”

“Yeah, so?”

“It’s about the bus.”

Min wasn’t sure how to tell me this; it was obvious from how he was dancing around what he wanted to say. “What about the bus?”

“Little Li found the driver. They had a long conversation, once the guy felt good enough to talk.”

“Something happened to him?”

“He fell down or something. Li says once he regained consciousness, he was fine. His story is that his brother was the regular driver but got sick all of a sudden. This guy volunteered to help out, though he’d never driven a bus before. He got lost, went up the wrong street, and then panicked when he saw someone in a strange costume in the road in front of him. He hit the gas instead of the brake.”

“Pretty convenient.”

“Maybe, but it checks out. The regular driver really was sick, and this guy really couldn’t steer a bus.”

“Good, we can eliminate the bus.” I put my hand over my eyes. “All right, now what do you want me to do?”

“Han said it was important to make sure the Scotsman is with someone. Don’t drop him off somewhere, like you did at the bank. They weren’t happy with that, not a bit. Han said to stop for lunch along the way if you need to stretch it out.”

“Is he going to pay out of his big budget? I don’t know of any restaurant en route, do you?”

“Must be something around there; people have to eat, don’t they?”

“Maybe we’ll steal a goat and roast it over an open fire.”

“What! Did you say steal a goat?”

“You’re fading, Min. I’ll see you later.” I clicked off the phone. Maybe banning these things wasn’t such a bad idea. Who invented them? And why was it so complicated to change the ringer?

3

Boswell was still moody and said he wanted to stay in his room, but I told him about the body in the river and he perked up a little. We drove for about two hours off the main highway, along dirt roads past fields that had been newly ploughed, between rows of acacia trees that didn’t yet have the leaves of the trees in the city but showed new branches that were limber in the breeze. We crossed a bridge without side rails that went over a riverbed with only a trickle of water. Amidst a pile of rocks in the center was an old steam shovel, its bucket resting on the cab of a dump truck that had no tires. “What was that?” asked the Scotsman. “Wait, I want to take a picture of it.”

“No need,” I said. “It’s just some construction equipment.”

“No, really, it’s perfect. I want to get a picture. Stop the car, back up.”

“Impossible, can’t go backwards on a bridge without side rails. It’s against traffic regulations. Anyway, you can’t take pictures of construction equipment.”

“Inspector, there isn’t anyone around here worrying about traffic rules, and who is going to know I took the picture except you?”

I accelerated and hit the bump at the end of the bridge hard enough to cause the Scotsman to bounce against the car’s roof.

“Hey, watch out.”

“Nearly there, just past those trees.”

When we got to the end of the road, there was a black car parked, one uniformed Ministry of People’s Security officer standing in the road, hands behind his back, looking up into the nearby hills. The driver and a second man were squatting in the middle of the road, in the shade of the car, smoking, not talking, not looking at anything in particular. When Boswell and I pulled over and walked up to them, none of them said anything. Boswell looked at me, sort of questioning, and cleared his throat. I shook my head and pointed up the path. I didn’t recognize the MPS officer, and he didn’t indicate he knew who I was, or cared.

Boswell walked ahead of me for about fifteen minutes up a steep slope, slippery with pine needles. At a place where the trail widened, we passed two more MPS officers slouched against a tree. We didn’t stop to chat. The path became steeper, and Boswell was starting to breathe hard when we came to a fast stream. We crossed on a line of boulders that barely served as a bridge. The far bank was more thickly wooded, and the path disappeared.

“Good and lost, what else could go wrong? So typical of this place, I have to laugh.” Boswell was swearing under his breath, thinking I couldn’t hear him. “A path leading nowhere, then dissolving into nothing, what a fucking country.” He swatted a bug on the back of his neck. “Let’s get out of here. I don’t need to be mucking about in these hills. There’s nothing for me to see.”

“No, we’re not lost. The path is around here somewhere.” It had to be. Paths didn’t just give out like that. Maybe in Scotland, but not in these hills. I took a few steps off to one side. “Here! You see?” I started up the narrow track and in a minute or so emerged into a clearing with a small, oddly shaped temple. Next to it was a ramshackle watchman’s hut. An old man shuffled from around the back, a thin brown dog at his heels. The dog trembled and wagged its tail until the old man muttered something and the dog dropped to the ground. It was quiet all of a sudden. Not a sound. Even the deep voice of the water rushing over the rocks disappeared.

“Nice dog.” I smiled and raised my hand to scratch the dog’s head. As soon as I did, the dog cowered and crawled behind the old man. “I’m not going to hit him, just give him a pat.”

“Dog doesn’t know that, now does it? People come by here, do all sorts of things to the dog. Never hurt nobody, young pup like this, but people don’t care.” The old man gave me a sly smile. “He likes the sound of money in the shrine box, though, makes him sit up and bark.”

“I’ll bet it does.” I walked over and stuffed a few small bills into the slit in the box sitting on the raised wooden platform. The dog sat up and barked twice. “Must have good hearing; those bills don’t make a lot of noise.”

“Dogs can hear a lot more than most people. Good judges of character, too.” Boswell emerged from the trees. The old man turned slowly in his direction. “Welcome, friend. The dog likes you.”

Boswell whistled, and the dog walked over. “Pretty thin, but good, alert eyes,” he said. “Might learn some commands, if you give him a chance. Not a lot of sheep around here, I take it. But any dog likes to work for his keep.”

The old man cocked his head, unsure whether he was hearing Korean or not. Then he nodded. “Scraps mostly. Dog here eats what I eat.” He pulled the waist of his trousers to show he didn’t eat much. “No harm in being thin, for either of us. As for work”—he laughed—“the dog and I have an agreement. As little as possible, and then rarely.”

“Good location for a shrine. You must be from around here.” I wanted to move the conversation beyond dogs, which I had the feeling Boswell would happily spend the rest of the day discussing.

“Nope.” Then a long silence from the old man. As we stood there, the sound of the stream returned, along with the drone of a bee moving in and out of the blossoms of a cherry tree that grew beside the shrine.

Boswell looked up at the sky. I nodded at the old man. “You’re not from around here?”

“I am.”

“Ah. Then, by ‘nope’ you mean a bad location for a shrine.”

“Very bad. Not far enough from the water, not set right with its back to the mountain. Nothing very good about it. But here it sits. You’d think someone would have changed its alignment, falls down often enough so it would be easy to do. But no, every time, it’s put back together just the way it was.” The old man shook his head. “Last time it was rebuilt was maybe sixty or seventy years ago.” After a moment, he shrugged and sighed. “That’s how things get to be like they are.”

“Yes,” I said. The old man sounded like Yang. It made me uneasy. Something else was making me uneasy, too, though I couldn’t figure out what. Boswell had moved over and was pretending to watch the bee, but I could tell he wanted to follow the conversation, if it ever got anywhere. “You pretty much see everyone who goes up this trail, I’d assume.” Sometimes a new tack helps with these old fellows.

“Hard to miss them, unless you’re blind,” he said.

I looked at the man’s eyes. “You’re blind, aren’t you?”

“It depends,” he said, “on your definition.”

“We’re going up the trail.” I started to point in the direction we were heading but it seemed foolish. “Did a patrol pass this way?”

“They did.”

“You know where they went?”

“I do. It will take you five, maybe ten minutes to get there.”

I nodded at Boswell, who fell in behind me. “We’ll be back.”

“Yes, you will, unless you plan to swim down. Only one path. I’ll be here whenever you get tired of looking around. Right here,” said the old man, “same as always.”

4

The stream went around a sharp bend and formed a series of deep pools, backed up behind piles of rocks. It was hard to tell if they had fallen naturally from the hills above, or if a few hundred years ago someone had rolled them down. The pools were mostly protected from the water’s flow. It was a quiet place; the shadow of the hills kept it out of the sun. A few small trees grew all the way down the bank to the water’s edge.

The body had been pulled up onto the rocks. I wished it had been left alone, but there was no sense complaining at this point. The twoman patrol sat on the farthest pile of rocks, beyond the shade in the sunlight. They had their shoes off and were dangling their feet in the water. They stood up when they saw me. One of them straightened his belt, which told me he was new. The other one stared at Boswell, said something to his companion, and looked away. He wasn’t so new; he’d probably sold his belt. If he’d had boots, he would have sold those, too.

I looked around the path for a moment, not expecting to find much. Boswell stood off to the side. “If you need me, Inspector, I’m here. But I don’t want to get in your way.”

“Let’s go down and take a look, Superintendent. Maybe you’ll see something that I miss.”

The body had been in the water awhile, but it didn’t look to me like it had been two days. Min must have misheard the report, or maybe the patrolmen had said they had been sleeping on the rocks for two days with their toes in the water. I knelt down. It was the Club Blue’s owner; his features weren’t damaged, though the flies were pretty thick. His head had been bruised on the side, but nothing you would have thought would kill him.

“He looks to me like he was plenty strong.” Boswell stood a little way off with a handkerchief to his nose. “Big shoulders. He could have slipped and fallen into the stream, I suppose. Maybe he hit his head on the way down, knocked himself out and drowned.”

“We’ll see. If he drowned, they must have drugged him first.”

Boswell dropped the handkerchief for a moment. “What makes you say that?” He took a breath, then gagged and put the handkerchief back in place. Looking at him, you wouldn’t have guessed he was so delicate.

“He wasn’t shot. The old man at the temple would have heard it. A shot in these hills would echo, even a pistol.”

“They could have knifed him. Who can tell at this point from that soggy mess?”

“Maybe, it looks like there are plenty of wounds on the body. Look at his hands.” He was missing two fingers on his left hand. And his left ear had been nearly torn off. Flies didn’t do that, and there were no animals in these hills that would have chewed on a body. “Getting him down from here will be a chore. It would be good if someone could check it at the scene, but that won’t happen. Anyway, the patrol already moved him.”

“Who is he?”

“Not exactly sure. I met him at that club we were at yesterday.”

“The one who kept shaking my hand? No, this is a different guy.”

The patrolmen had put on their socks and shoes and were making their way over to where we were standing. I motioned to them to wait. “This is the previous manager. I didn’t think he was involved in anything serious, but it looks like I was wrong.”

“Your bank robbery?”

“What would make you say that, Superintendent?”

“I don’t know, just a guess.”

I thought a moment. “Could be you’re right. Maybe somebody thought he was going to talk when he was supposed to stay quiet, or maybe they thought he was keeping something they thought was theirs. In those clothes, he didn’t come up here for a picnic or a day of hiking in the hills. That soggy mess is his work clothes. I guess the crease in those trousers is gone for good.”

Boswell looked away and gagged again. “Sorry, I don’t do well with this sort of thing.” He took a moment to regain his composure. “There, well, that’s better. Just a body, after all. Sounds like you already knew a lot about him.” He was still a little pale.

“This is my case, Superintendent.” I walked over to the patrol. The new officer was uneasy; he kept his eyes averted.

“I thought we should leave the body where it was,” the new man muttered, “but then we remembered the regulations said to preserve the evidence, so we figured we’d move it out of the water. I remembered the regulation.” He looked at me for a moment but decided it wasn’t going to get him anything.

“Well, by moving the body you ruined the evidence. Remember that next time. Just go back to the rock and stay out of the way. I’ll call someone to come up from Pyongyang to take care of what’s left. They’ll want a statement from both of you. And it better be accurate to the last stone. I don’t know how you’re going to explain that your shoes were off when I arrived, but you’ll think of something.”

5

“Come, let’s talk, my friend.” I started to take the old man’s hand, but he was already moving toward the step that ran along the front of his hut. He sat and patted the place beside him. Just from that, I knew he would tell me the truth.

“You’re a security man, I can tell. But who is your friend over there?” He nodded at the tree, where Boswell was standing. “He talks funny. Nice man, I can tell, but who the hell taught him to speak Korean?”

“Foreigner.” I paused. “From Scotland.”

The old man nodded. “I know Scotland, I fought a company of Scots not far from here during the war.” He lifted his face toward the sun. “That’s when I lost my sight, in that battle. If you can call it a battle. It wasn’t much, no big thing. Didn’t turn no tide. Just a tiny shootout, me and them. They found me lying in a hole. My face was covered with blood and I couldn’t see. I heard their voices. One of them jumped down and turned me over. I heard the safety click of a pistol up top the hole. But that one, he washed my face with a wet cloth, left me a biscuit, put it in my hand is what he did. Then they went away. The next night I ate the biscuit and crawled toward the sound of voices. I could hear Chinese, but I didn’t want them to find me. They would have left me to die. But it was just a Chinese officer talking on the radio. This shrine was being used as a command post for a company of our boys, with a Chinese advisor attached. Our troops were nervous, they almost shot up the bushes when they heard me crawling toward them, but then I shouted who I was and they came for me. They said they didn’t have any medicine or anything, but they gave me some food, and got me some water from the river. It was cold, tasted good, just like it does now. They told me to stay at the shrine. I’ve been here ever since. So I know Scotland, that’s what brought me here, you might say.”

Boswell had moved closer. He was pale and his eyes were closed. We listened to the river for a moment, and the wind in the trees. Then I stood up. “Don’t let it bother you,” I said to him. “The country’s littered with these stories. Your countrymen came over, shot up the mountains, then went home to your peaceful valleys and trout streams. We were left here.” I looked around the hills that surrounded the spot.

The old man got to his feet and faced Boswell. “Never mind,” he said in a strong, clear voice and then again, but softer this time, “Never mind.”

“I need to ask you a question or two. Alright?” He knew a lot, and he was only going to tell me a little. That’s how he survived out here. I’d take what he gave me. People think the truth is bulky, like a big package. More often, it comes in small drops, like rain from the eaves. You can listen to it all night long, but in the morning when you go outside, there might not be anything there.

“Go on.” The old man turned his face to me. “You want to know about the body in the river.”

“I do. What do you know about it?”

“Nothing. The dog was awfully upset. She howled a little. It was two nights ago, maybe more.” He could have lost track of time, but I didn’t think so. Maybe that’s why the report the barefoot patrol had phoned in mentioned “two days,” because they heard the same story from the old man. “She took me over to that group of rocks upstream, slippery at night with the mist, so we took our time. I nearly stumbled over the body, but I heard the flies and stopped. The dog froze, she doesn’t like dead things. I think death confuses her.” He scratched the dog behind the ears. “A group of strangers walked by here earlier that day. Not very friendly.”

How could he stumble on the body if it was floating in one of those pools? I looked over at Boswell; he was wondering the same thing.

“Besides their not being friendly,” I said, “what did you notice?” I’d have to come back, without Boswell, to question the old man again.

“Talked sort of strange, but they were Korean, not like your friend here.” He turned toward Boswell. “No offense.” He turned back to me. “One of them asked if the path went very far upstream, and how deep the water was.”

“How many of them were there?”

“Three went up. One of them walked funny, like he was dragging his leg. He was taking short breaths, sort of painful. Only two of them were talking. They were saying something about snakes. I pretended not to notice.”

“How many came back?”

“Guess.”

6

We walked down the path in silence; the car with the security men was gone but there was a note on my windshield. I crumpled it up and threw it away. That bastard didn’t even acknowledge my presence, and he’s leaving me notes?

Boswell looked at me over the top of the car before he got in. “Whew.” He shook his head. “Warn me next time, would you?”

“You mean the war story? That was nothing,” I said. “You should see the ones without legs.”

He pointed at the wad of paper I’d thrown on the ground. “Aren’t you going to read that note?”

“Why bother? It’s from that guy who was standing in the road. He didn’t look very busy. What do you think he was doing?”

“Keeping an eye on us?”

It occurred to me that Boswell might have hit on something. Han might just have been keeping track of where the two of us were. Well, if SSD—or whoever he worked for—had enough manpower to toss around like that, let them choke on it.

“Me, most probably,” I said. “I think I’ve seen him around. He’s from a different section altogether. The paperwork will never get to our office. He won’t file it, anyway. Too much trouble.”

“What about those two uniformed guys up the path?”

I shrugged. “They were probably sent to watch the one in the road.”

“You’re kidding.”

I grinned. “Yeah. Get in. Let’s not stand here all the dooh-da day.”

Boswell looked surprised. “Where the hell did you learn that, Inspector? Did you know it’s from an old American song?”

“I know where it’s from. I have a degree from the University of Karaoke. You ever heard ‘Red River Valley’? Very sad song, some people tear up, especially when they’ve had a lot to drink. I can sing it on the way back.”

The superintendent shook his head. “Perhaps another time, Inspector. I’m not in the mood for a sad tune right now.”

7

I took another route, not too much out of the way, but I didn’t want to go by the steam shovel again. Partway back into the city, we passed through a village. It was covered with coal dust from a factory set behind the fields, and even in the bright sunshine the houses and the inhabitants carried a grimness that made me wish Boswell had stayed in his hotel room. His eyes were closed, and I thought he might be asleep, but then he opened them and said, “Looks like an old town I used to patrol at home. Not even the rain could make it clean.”

“What did your embassy say?” I asked casually.

“About what?” He turned to look out the window.

“About the threat. You’ve told them already, so they could send an alert back, I assume.”

“No, Inspector, I told no one, least of all the embassy. I don’t want anyone to know, not yet.” He rolled down the window and put his hand on top of the car. “I’m the person on the scene. That’s how it’s done.”

“Sure,” I said. “Makes sense.” It didn’t make sense. Unless he had his own communication system, how was he going to get the information back to his capital? Carrier pigeon? The embassy was the only place he had for secure communications, unless he had something in his luggage that was exceptionally well concealed. News like this couldn’t go back over an open phone line. I thought about it. Maybe his security service didn’t trust the embassy people. No reason it should; I’d never heard of a security service anywhere that didn’t consider its foreign ministry personnel as anything but a running wound.

As the road turned north, we drove toward a clump of forsythia bushes, a brilliant explosion of yellow, next to a group of three or four plum trees in blossom. “Now that,” Boswell said, “is what I like to see in the spring, don’t you, Inspector? Some signs of life. Very thoughtful how they plant these things, to give some color this time of year. Wait, it looks like a monument just up that hill. Let’s see what it is. Maybe I can take a picture.”

“I know what it is. You don’t need a picture of that.”

“It’s a park or something.”

“No, it’s a marker. It commemorates a visit.”

“Historical?”

“I suppose, if you care to count the past fifty years as history.”

I sped up to get past so he wouldn’t ask to stop.

“Well, it’s nice anyway, the trees and all.”

I pressed down harder on the accelerator. The car jumped.

“What’s the matter?” Boswell reached for the dashboard to steady himself. “You don’t like a bit of color in April for these poor folk?”

“I do. I just don’t think it should be all banged together this way. People should appreciate nature for itself.” I stared straight ahead. “Not connect it with . . . other things.”

Boswell looked at me, then turned back to concentrate on the scenery. Finally, he shook his head. “Did you say something?” he said quietly. “I didn’t hear a word.”

“No, nothing.” My eyes never left the road. “Must have been the wind.”