A Corpse in the Koryo

3

From my conversation with the office before coming over to the Koryo, I knew that hotel security had done at least one thing right: They'd called the liaison office in the People's Security Ministry as soon as the body was discovered. From there everything went wrong. There had been a moment of genuine panic at the Ministry when the first identification, based on a card in the blue polyester pants pocket, suggested the deceased was a Finnish citizen, and worse, an inspector for the International Atomic Energy Agency. Panic led to a call directly to the Foreign Ministry duty officer, breaking all rules. The chain of command was supposed to run through hotel security to the police, then to the party's security organization, from there to the party liaison in the Foreign Ministry, and only then to the Ministry's unfortunate duty officer, usually someone junior. That night, not only was the duty officer junior, but because it was a Saturday, it was his very first shift alone. He didn't bother to look in his instructions manual to see that he wasn't supposed to take a call about the murder of a foreigner from anyone but his own party liaison man. Even so, he was smart enough to realize that the death of an IAEA inspector would be a disaster.

Too bad he did the worst thing possible. He called a friend of his, a Captain Choi in the Military Security Command. Choi, smart and on his way up, checked his manual and alerted his duty officer, who called the police to ask why the hell the Foreign Ministry was involved in a state security investigation.

This caused seventy-two hours of complaints and accusations by various liaison officers, during which time the body was moved to the central morgue, well before any sort of crime scene report was written, much less filed. Just as things were calming down, the Military Police of the Pyongyang Military Garrison raised hell. It was one of those rare occasions when they were supposed to be alerted, but no one had their number-and even if they had, no one would have remembered to call.

Just as I walked through the front door of the room, Chief Inspector Pak emerged from the bathroom, wiping his hands on his shirt.

"About time you showed up, Inspector."

"A pleasure, I'm sure. Do you want to hear about my trip and my conversations with Kang?"

"Screw your trip. Screw Kang. I have a dead foreigner in the morgue that no one can identify, cause of death unknown, time of death unknown, and a summons to see our friend Kim of Military Security this afternoon at three. Care to join me?"

"Pass. I've spent the past week dodging him, and I have reasons not to want to see him anytime soon. You were right. It's a good idea for me to keep as far away from him as possible."

"Luckily, someone is leaning on him over this case. I don't know who, yet, but as long as he is feeling some pain, he'll behave with us. I know his type. He's nervous, and he needs help. If this goes bad, he could end up walking to work in a coal mine."

I had developed a sour feeling about this case from the moment I heard how the notification had gone out of channels. The fact that there were no signs of an investigation had set off more warning bells.