A Corpse in the Koryo

10

I've seen the sun rise over the hills a thousand times, in different seasons, in different weather, sometimes eager for the day, sometimes not.

Each time, I waited for that absolute moment of peace that comes the instant the hills and the sky, the light and the quiet fuse into one. During one of my first trips abroad, when I was still in the Ministry's liaison office and traveling to Berlin to help set up a visit by the Minister, I'd been ordered to Geneva to pick up instructions that I knew would make no sense and could only complicate my assignment. The instructions never arrived, but it gave me an excuse to sit by the lake on a Sunday morning and watch day break over the Alps.

It surprised me that there was nothing peaceful about dawn creeping across those mountains. I'd seen pictures on calendars, but the pictures all lied; they were too pretty, too smooth, too much sparkle. The peaks I saw clawed the sky, so that the dawn was wounded and the sunlight bled into the day. The Alps weren't a source of serenity. They didn't calm your heart or even make you sad with memories. They hulked over Geneva, defiant, threatening to tumble into the lake at its upper end near a little town called Montreux, scattering the swans and swamping the outdoor restaurants with their yellow umbrellas along the shore. When I thought about it later on the train, I figured that must be why the Swiss were so distant, always looking over their shoulders to make sure those mountains were not about to crush them once and for all.

The hills around Manpo were not soothing, either. They were too close to China maybe, with the same pretensions of grandeur. But there was nothing defiant about them, and there was no danger they would molest the city. The hills were too tired; the city had no virtue to lose.

So there was a separation: Manpo paid no attention to the hills anymore, and the hills disdained the squalid collection of buildings at their feet. Much as the Alps might glower at Geneva, at least it was Geneva they woke with. I couldn't imagine what they would have done if they had to watch over Manpo day in and day out until, pebble by pebble, they were ground down to foothills.

Kang wanted me to get a sense of Manpo, and I could only get that by walking around, not going anywhere special. The more I wandered aimlessly, the less interested any tails would be. Actually, if they were very good, they should become more curious the more I didn't seem to have a destination, but this far out of the capital, it was unlikely there would be anyone who was much good or curious about anything beyond breaking for dinner. All the good people wanted to serve in Pyongyang.

Border cities ended up mostly as security service junkyards-unless a flying squad was sent on a special assignment.

I set out from the Manpo Inn before daybreak and wandered over to the teahouse Kang's daughter ran, on the off chance it would be open. It wasn't, not even a sign of life. No breakfast, but at least I felt rested.

Room 501, which I'd bought with the promise of a bushel of phony Wonsan fish, hadn't been painted recently, unless "recent" had another meaning on the border, but at least it had been quiet. There was a soft knock on the door around four in the morning, but I hadn't ordered room service and wasn't curious who was tiptoeing around at that hour.

When I left the inn, the clerk was standing behind the front desk. He asked if I'd slept well, but I could see his heart wasn't in the leer he tried to push across his face. It occurred to me that I hadn't filled out any registration forms here, either. In this town, it didn't matter who you were.

Besides, all the documentation would be false, and everyone knew it.

Halfway out of town, the dark called it quits and it was day. That suited me fine. I had a feeling I was being followed, and daylight makes it hard to tail someone on a deserted dirt road leading up to the mountains.

Once the climb got steep, I stopped worrying about the tail. If boredom was a problem for these guys, physical exertion was going to be one, too. None of them would want to stick with me all the way up a mountain, and they wouldn't have had time to set up another team, partway up the trail. More than the tail, I was worried about my feet. I knew that if I didn't watch each step, I'd stumble and wrench my back-again.

The road leveled off, and as it did, a view opened up of a dead-end valley. At its mouth, there were two buildings, a guard post, and a black Mercedes, real clean, starting to reflect the few rays of sun that perched on the top of the hills before tumbling onto the scene below. Smoke was coming from a chimney in the building that was still in the shadows.

A lamp was on in one of the upstairs windows; then someone clicked it off. The other building was half in the sun but looked deserted.

The buildings were about three hundred meters away, though because of the angle and the clear air at that hour, they looked closer. I could see the guard pretty well. He was leaning against a tree, sipping tea, a dog curled up at his feet-a violation of every rule I'd ever learned about sentry duty. Up the valley the sun glinted off something metallic, first only at one spot, then at another, and another. Probably machine-gun posts, judging from how regularly they were spaced.

There was a double fence line. None of this impressed the dog, which was fast asleep.

I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned to see who it was. We'd been trained never to make that mistake; I made it anyway. The next thing I knew, I was on the ground looking up at the tree tops, my cheek aching. Luckily, because the whole thing happened so fast, I hadn't tensed: My back was fine. I relaxed on the pine needles and, for a moment, enjoyed the trees and blue sky.

Then the sky was blotted out by a face leaning over me. It was one of the Military Security thugs I'd seen the night before, loitering outside the goat lady's tent. I couldn't believe someone that big and ugly could have moved so quietly. In the darkness, I hadn't gotten a good look at him, but now he had my full attention. There was no doubt he was Korean, but neither could anyone miss that in his veins flowed blood from ancestors who never belonged here. The hawklike features, the sharp nose on a long, lean face, flashing eyes set deep in his head.

Allowing for generations of marriage with the locals, this was the face of a long-ago Arab horseman, come far from home and trapped here by fateful orders he could not disobey.

I'd seen a face like this once before. On the road near our house, a traveling barber had set up shop. Same nose, same deep-set eyes. I'd stared, not just because he looked different, but because he had a different air; he moved like someone who wasn't comfortable surrounded by the fields and the hills. "Don't gawk at strangers," my grandfather said.

Then he lowered his voice. "That one"-he nodded his head toward the barber-"beware of his kind." Centuries ago, he told me, when their empire stretched halfway around the earth, the Mongols had sent Arab princesses and their retainers to the Korean court. They stayed, or most of them, and mixed with the population.

Yes, but at that time the court was in the southern part of the country, I said; how could there be any descendants around where we lived, far to the north? My grandfather laughed and snapped his belt. "Do you think they didn't spend the night up here on the way south to Chungchong?"

Abruptly, he turned serious again. Foreign blood, he warned, was a stain; it would never go away. "Anyone named Chong might be one of them. Watch for people named Chong." He spoke so gravely it gave me chills. "Watch their eyes real close."

In this case, I had no choice. His nose was almost touching mine, and I could smell the breakfast on his breath. "Surprised to see me?" He didn't expect an answer.

I started to get up, but he put a huge hand on my shoulder and pushed me back onto the ground. "No, if you stand, that might catch the attention of the guard down there. If he got off a lucky shot, it could kill you. Bad way to start the day."

I rubbed my cheek. "And this was a good way?"

He considered that for a moment. "Where you from?"

"Who wants to know?"

He growled. "Don't tempt me. If you disappeared in these hills, no one would care."

"You're not going to kill me. You'd have done it by now if those were your orders."

He grunted and stood up, apparently not worried about the guard down below. "I'm going to ask you some questions. If I like the answers, you can limp back to the inn, gather your things, and go back to where you came from. If I don't-" He opened his coat, and I saw he had a knife that had an odd blade. "It's used to gut goats." He let his coat fall back.

My cheek was going numb, and my eye was starting to swell. I was getting tired of this sort of thing. Pak had sent me out of Pyongyang, he said, to keep me safe. Getting hit on the head and punched in the face all in the same lousy town wasn't my idea of safe. What the hell was Pak thinking, telling me to steer clear of Kang and then pushing me into his path? If he knew something big was going on, why didn't he just tell me? Maybe I should have resigned, like he wanted. I looked up into the ugly face. No, I didn't want to resign, I wanted to get this guy's foot off my chest.

"I'm only going to ask each question once. Before I do, and to save us some time, I'll tell you I've checked in Wonsan."

If my cheek hadn't hurt so bad I might have laughed in his face.

What was he going to check in Wonsan? I hadn't filled out any registration papers at the inn; there were no documents to trace. If he'd called the Wonsan State Security Department, they'd have had a good giggle and then gone back to sleep. They were incredibly lazy. I knew this for a fact because we needed their help once and when we called to explain our problem, there was nothing but a long silence on the other end of the phone.

"You checked. Good for you. If you know the answers, why are you asking?"

"Name."

"Ho Tarn."

Ho Tarn had been a ranking party member years ago, a smart man with the normal number of enemies; he died in a hospital overseas. Ho Tarn's father and my grandfather had known each other. We made a piece of furniture for Ho's family, and they liked it very much. At the time, Ho had been a college student. He was home when we delivered the piece: a blanket chest made of chestnut that I'd smoothed and polished for days before my grandfather nodded in satisfaction.

When Ho heard I'd helped build the chest, he took me outside into the courtyard. It was May, and the blossoms on the apple tree were new, brilliantly white. Ho was fairly short, so it didn't feel like an adult was talking to me, more like a brother. "Your grandfather is a great man. Still we need him, and we will need you, too, before all of this is over." I thanked him, though I found it odd he should speak to me in that way.

Later, when I told my grandfather, he became angrier than I had ever seen him. "Have you learned nothing from me, in all of these years?" he shouted. "When someone takes you aside and says even three honest words to you, haven't you learned not to tell anyone else, not even me?" His face was white with rage. "You'll get yourself killed, you'll get anyone stupid enough to trust you sent to the camps, and why? Because you don't pay attention, you don't see. Can my grandson be such a fool?"

"I'm not a fool."

"Then don't act like one. I lost my son to this. Don't let me lose the rest of the family as well."

"This. What is this?"

He grabbed me by my shoulders and shook me. "Look around you.

Do you think this is what we wanted, that for this we fought the Japanese, for this I sent your father to die on a lousy winter morning? For Christ's sake, look around you!"

I froze. I couldn't breathe. I'd never heard him speak like that. Not once, never once. For weeks afterward we barely said anything to each other. Years later, when I was assigned to a guard detail for a visiting Romanian official, Ho, who by then had become Foreign Minister, came up to me during a quiet moment. "That chest is in my house. It still gleams." Just then he was called away, and we never met again.

"So, Comrade Ho, you graduated from the Wonsan Fishery College, did you?"

I had no idea if there was such a place, but he probably checked at least that much, so I stuck to the truth. "Never heard of it. Whoever told you I knew anything about fishing?"

"Word has it you peddle fish."

"As far as I'm concerned, they jump into the truck. I don't know how they get there."

"You're lying."

"Fine, someone loads them on, so shoot me."

He pulled his coat back, and the knife blade glinted in the morning sun. "Don't have to."

"Look, I'm just a middleman. I make a little, I spend a little, I make sure everyone is happy. Are you happy, Comrade Chong?" This was the second crate of fish I didn't have that I was giving away. From the funny look on his face, I thought for a moment I'd made a mistake.

Maybe his name wasn't Chong. Then he pitched forward and collapsed across my legs. I pushed him away and scrambled clear. The guard in the valley was still sipping tea. The dog looked up for a moment, then put its head back down on its paws.

From behind a tree next to the road, I saw something move. Kang stepped out. "Not easy throwing a rock uphill like that. Luckily, he has a big, stupid head."

"Good morning. Taking a stroll, are we?" I glanced down at the lump on the ground. There was no movement.

Kang stood off a few feet. "His name is Chong. If he twitches, I'll shoot him."

"Here?"

"As good a place as any."

I looked back down. "He's not twitching. I'm not even sure he's breathing."

"Good."

"In fact, I think he might be dead."

"Better."

I knelt down and rolled Chong over. No fish for him.

Kang moved a step closer, no longer tensed to reach for his pistol.

"Must have hit his head on something harder than his thick skull."

He glanced down the valley, toward the guard. "We'll leave him here.

Let's go."

"Leave him? Here? And then what?"

"Someone will find him, if something furry doesn't nibble on him first."

"I know this is Manpo, but don't the police like to be informed about unexplained deaths?"

"Inspector, please, they don't even have a filing cabinet. Anyway, it's not unexplained. He tripped on his shoelaces and fell on a rock. Often fatal."

"He was following me. Someone will know that. And the guard in the valley must have seen the two of us up here. There will be inquiries."

Kang was getting impatient. "Don't worry about the guard. He didn't see anything."

"You think you're going to pay him off?"

"I don't have to. He works for me." I couldn't tell if he meant to tell me or if it had slipped out-though I didn't think Kang was the type who let things slip.

"That guard? What is the Investigations Department doing with agents in the hills of Manpo sipping tea?"

"I didn't say he was an agent. Now, can we go?"

"Whose compound is that?"

"No one you'd be interested in."

"Suddenly, I'm very interested."

All at once, Kang looked tired. "Pak warned me you could be an awful pain in the ass."

"You want me to peddle some fish on that compound?"

This brought a thoughtful look. "Pak also said you were smart.

That's an idea I hadn't considered. You'll need to be in there by this evening."

"Why?"

"I don't know." Kang stared down the trail. "No, really, I don't know. My information is that whatever is going on down there gets done tomorrow at dawn."

"Does this have anything to do with what Pak told me?"

"That depends. What did Pak tell you?" It wasn't a friendly inquiry.

"You want my help. That's what you said. But you have told me exactly nothing about what you want me to do. Or more important, why.

I have developed a rule over the years. I stick to it, all the time. Never take a step, unless I can see at least that far in front. You don't want to tell me some secrets, okay, I don't want to know. But if you don't tell me something more than what you've given me so far, this is as far as I go."

Kang looked around. "Nice place for a conversation, I guess. But first, tell me what Pak said."

"All he said was, the ground was moving."

"That's it?"

I thought a moment. "He also said all hell might be about to break out."

"Not might. Will, and soon." I could see Kang was debating with himself about what more to say. "This has been coming for a while.

Months. We first picked it up in February, in Japan. After our initial reports, we were told to stop paying attention, it wasn't our business."

"So you paid closer attention."

"What I don't know can hurt me. Basically, we dug around and realized there has been a decision to fix relations with Japan, finally."

"And that's bad?"

"No, nothing wrong with that, if you can stand smiling at the Japs in order to get a few billion dollars in blood money from them. But there is a hitch. The Japanese want some old problems"-Kang hesitated, then finished the thought-"solved."

"What has this got to do with that compound down there?"

"Nothing, directly. Except that's a Military Security compound, and Military Security has been unleashed to help solve those old problems."

"And they think you're part of the problem standing in the way of those billions?"

"I need to keep them off my neck for at least another week. Knowing what is going on down there might help."

"You're plenty interested in Military Security, aren't you? Is that what you needed from me when we were at the tower, some sense of the location of Military Security offices? I thought the Investigations Department had pretty good sources of information."

"On the outside, Inspector, not at home. Pyongyang is a foreign country to me. Ask me about Beijing, ask me about Moscow, even ask me about Budapest." He smiled. "In Budapest, I know pretty much what goes on, and where. But Pyongyang?" He shook his head.

"Won't it spook them if Chong's body is found on the road overlooking their buildings?"

"I doubt it. Anyway, stop worrying about Chong's carcass. It won't be here long. There will be some lumber trucks by in an hour or so.

They drive fast and have bad brakes. It's a miracle no one has been hit on this road before."

"I thought it was bad shoelaces."

Kang was moving fast down the road. "So he fell in front of a truck."

"Why was Chong following me?" I started off after Kang, wondering how he could move so quickly downhill without falling over.

"He was stupid, but he had a sixth sense. Maybe you don't smell enough like someone who deals in fish. Maybe you look like a friend he once had from Wonsan. Who cares? We've got work to do, and only twelve hours left to do it."

I glanced down in the valley again. The guard was gone. The so called guard dog had his nose in the teacup. It didn't look like it was going to be a problem to saunter in the gate. It was a cinch that the dog was working for Kang, too.