A Corpse in the Koryo

"I

don't give a damn."

"Maybe they get us some more information on the cars that are part of this."

"Maybe. But people lose keys. Maybe this driver needed to carry a spare. Don't give me a maybe." Pak gave one of the swings a push. "I'm supposed to go to the Minister and say, 'Maybe we've solved the case.

There were two sets of keys. I know because one of my best men stole them from the morgue.' Give me a fact, would you! And I don't want to hear about roots."

"We know the guy's a Finn."

"You keep saying that. What's this thing with you and Finns, anyway?"

Pak wasn't mad at me; he was just behind in figuring out what was going on. At this point in a case, when we still had only loose facts and not much else, he tended to get cross.

"One more thing." I owed it to Pak to tell him what I knew, or thought I knew. "I had to talk to a couple of farmers."

Pak took his sunglasses off, very slowly, the way he does when he senses bad news. "Meaning?"

"One of them was the uncle of the boy who was killed. Long story.

Anyway, they're on our side. I told them to call Li Min Sung if they wanted to check up on me." I smiled, without much conviction. "We need a little help from somewhere."

Pak nodded. "Good, now we have the floor lady at the Koryo and a couple of farmers working for us. And on the other side, Kim and his band of snakes." There was a pause. "You want to tell me about Chong?"

Before I could open my mouth, Pak held up his hand. "Never mind.

That's all I needed to know, and I don't want to know any more." He shook his finger at me. "I'll make a couple of phone calls. Can you please stay out of trouble for three or four hours until I get us some protection?

The Minister likes you, but then, he doesn't have to put up with your wood chips. If I can get through to him, he'll throw up a shield for us, though how much good it will do against Military Security is anybody's guess."

"I could start checking pine trees in the city, if you want." Pak didn't respond. I could see he was thinking of something else. "No, forget it. I'm not working with my former brother. I'm not going to talk to him. The only reason he's on the case is to lead us over a cliff, I'm warning you."

I dreamed of a plain, flat to the horizon, As if the mountains had crumbled To dust around us; we were mad With sorrow; and howled at the moon to Bring back the soft rolling hills That had echoed with our laughter.

– – Pvon Kil Sun (] 122-1 14!›) My brother had lost weight since I last saw him.

He didn't look all that good. His face was empty, flat. Even when we were little, in the midst of the war when other children were thin and frail, his cheeks had been full. Mine would be dull and chapped in winter; his cheeks turned ruddy with the cold. People would stare, wondering where he got the extra food. But he didn't eat extra, sometimes he even gave me a little of his portion. He just looked fuller than anyone else. When he got older, he got round, especially his face. At first, when he was moving up the ranks of the party and he was pleased with himself, it showed in his face: round and smooth, unmarked by all of those he rolled over. Later the roundness went to fat and then, with age, to a menacing, distorted mask.

He was sitting in the beer hall in the Koryo, at the same table where I'd met Kang, tightening his fingers around a bottle of beer. He was annoyed because I was late, and he knew I was late on purpose. It annoyed him that I did most things on purpose. Then he spotted my reflection in the front window. He took a sip of beer, and I saw his body tense up.

I walked over to the table and sat down without saying a word. We stared at each other. "This wasn't my idea," I said finally. "I told you five years ago I would never talk to you again, and as far as I am concerned, I'm not talking to you."

He rolled the beer bottle between his hands. I thought he might grab it by the neck and shove it into my face, but then he relaxed. "Let up, just for a minute, why don't you?" he said. "We turned out different, that's all. I believe in what I do. You don't believe in anything. I've been assigned to this case, over my objections. You don't like it. But we both have our orders."

"No, you're wrong. We're not working together on this. Not on anything, ever, not even in hell."

He glared at me, and I glared back. I deliberately took the piece of wood from my pocket and began working it over and over in the fingers of first one hand, then the other. Before I drove over, I'd retrieved the piece of persimmon from my out-box. I wanted to have it with me for our meeting. My brother wouldn't know the difference between persimmon wood and balsa wood. But it wasn't for him. It was for me.

My brother was one of those people who was annoyed when I held a piece of wood in my hand. He said it was a character fault, and he didn't have sympathy for people with faults. "If you're doing that to get on my nerves, forget it." He watched as I put the wood on the table, daring him to sweep it onto the floor.

"It's persimmon," I said. "Very hard. Your friends in the Central Committee wouldn't like it. They need something softer, more pliable."

Before my brother could say anything, the player piano started up: my piano roll with the Beatles on it. He grimaced. "Music like that is poison. Why do they play that garbage? No wonder the kids today are so unreliable."

"Unreliable." I let the word sit between us, oozing like a sore. "Go ahead, give me the rest of the speech, about the socialist renegades who are undermining the revolution, diluting the Leader's ideas, turning back the clock."

He went dead white. "You may be a blood relative"-he was hissing softly, like a lizard pinned by a rock-"but you'd better be careful. You can still be brought to justice, along with the rest of them."

"A purge? Are you going to launch a one-man purge?"

"Don't tempt fate. Things are happening. All this garbage will be swept away, along with everyone who has fostered it. I'm through protecting you." His narrow, mean eyes were never his best feature, and they got uglier when he started talking like this.

I leaned across the table, so I could stare into his ugly eyes. "Get your orders changed. I'm only going to warn you once. Get them changed, and get out of my way on this case."

"My brother, the police inspector, threatening me, a Central Committee department vice director?" He didn't budge or back away. "The Heartbeat of the Revolution won't be able to save you much longer, don't you know that, you fool?"

Pure rage must have flashed across my face almost before I felt it myself, because I saw him recoil. My voice was hoarse; I didn't recognize it when I spoke. "Get out of my sight. If you ever speak that way about Grandfather again, I will kill you." I sat back and took a deep breath. "With my bare hands, I'll rip your stinking heart from your chest."

He sipped his beer, a show of unconcern, but the glass was shaking when he put it down. Then he slid off the bench, stood up stiffly, and walked out the door. The doorman started to tip his hat but stepped back when he saw the expression on my brother's face. The waitress at the bar, trying to make herself invisible, stood still as a deer when it smells trouble. She had heard the whole thing. When she noticed I was watching her, she started wiping the bar with a rag, on the same spot, over and over again.

L