Hidden Moon

2

I did some paperwork, stared at the shadows as they crept across the cracks in the ceiling for a while, then got in the office car and drove toward the Gold Star Bank the long way around, across one of the newer bridges over the Taedong, through old blocks of apartments, past the diplomatic compound, over to the university, and finally back over the river. Traffic on the street in front of the bank was sparse, no buses. There was plenty of space to park, but I didn’t want to get too close. I found a deserted cross street from which I could watch the back of the building and pulled over to wait. It was getting to be night, and it didn’t take long for night to arrive.

After fifteen minutes, the back door opened, and a man hurried down a path that cut across an empty lot. He had on a cloth cap and was hunched over. It was too dark to see his face; there was only a slice of moon and no lights this far away from the main road. A minute later, the door opened again, and the woman in the yellow dress stepped out. She looked up and down the street, started to walk in my direction, then turned and strolled the other way. It wasn’t the sort of move she would have made if she’d seen my car, nothing abrupt. It was more like she’d changed her mind, remembered she had to be somewhere else, but not urgently. I was about to get out of my car to follow her when the door opened a third time, and a man with broad shoulders appeared. He walked with a confident step you could distinguish a kilometer away. I was willing to bet the crease in his trousers was sharp. If it wasn’t my new best friend from the Club Blue, it had to be his twin brother, golden aura and all.