A Knife Edge

FIFTY

Chalmers and I didn't sit together on the plane. We didn't catch the same bus from Incheon Airport to the city. We didn't stay at the same hotel. So I was happy. I believed I'd finally figured Chalmers out. He was involved in the mission in such a way that if it turned out well, he could grab a hefty measure of credit. If not, he was far enough away to avoid any career-lethal shit from sticking.

As for the flight itself, I ate the food, watched the movies, and, like most other passengers, tried to get some sleep. No sweats, no tingles, no fear — just the apparently far more normal searing boredom. I made myself a mental note to write to the publishers of Have a Nice Flight and give them another surefire method for overcoming aviaphobia.

Like just about everywhere else in the world, it seemed, it was snowing in Seoul, and about twenty-five degrees. There was no wind. That had apparently been and gone, leaving the place rattled, a vicious Siberian squall that had moved on to Japan to terrorize the island of Kyushu.

I took a cab from the bus terminal to the Hilton. I'd been to Seoul once before, but only for a few days and it was quite a few years back. My memory of the place was that the people ate a lot of pickled cabbage called kimchi, and not enough breath mints. They were also excruciatingly polite, mostly went by the name Kim, and used writing symbols that reminded me of crop circles.

Night had fallen, though the city's love of neon was doing a good job of keeping things lit up. The cab pulled into the hotel drive. I signed into my room and received an envelope with a message inside. I tore it open. It was an address and a time and an offer to meet up. The note was signed “Rossi.” The clock on the wall told me I had an hour and ten to get to the address.

An hour and five later, my cab pulled up outside a Korean BBQ joint in a relatively quiet street. I paid the driver his fare and went inside. The place smelled like the foyer of my apartment back in D.C. The restaurant was way too hot, around eighty degrees, causing a burning sensation on the tips of my ears. The lighting was on the moody side of dark. Most of the male customers seemed a lot older than the women accompanying them, which probably accounted for the lack of watts.

“Cooper?” said a voice behind me. I turned and a woman held out her hand to shake. “Haiko Rossi.”

We shook. Her hand was small, but the grip was firm. It was like shaking hands with needle-nose pliers. “You hungry?” she asked.

I looked around, searching for some sign in English. “They do bulgogi here?”

“Specialty of the house.”

“You eat here a lot?”

“Never been here before.”

“How do you know it's a specialty?”

“It's a specialty of every Korean restaurant.”

I followed Rossi to a booth. I couldn't place her accent. Midwest, probably, but the edges had been ground away by a long absence. Haiko Rossi was petite, maybe five six, anywhere between twenty-five and thirty. She wore tight, low-slung faded jeans and a fitted top with some kind of graphic on it that looked like an ink stain. Her boots were black polished leather. Her straight black hair was almost blue in places, except where she'd had it dyed dramatically blond. It was cut in layers and short enough on top so that it stuck almost straight up. Down the back, it was layered so that it followed the curve of her neck. There was a diamond stud in her nose, and one high up on the left ear. Her features were Asian, but European at the same time, her makeup expertly applied. Rossi was attractive, if the whole Eurasian/ exotic-beauty thing worked for you.

“Want to eat something?” Rossi asked, as I took the seat opposite, squeezing into the narrow booth.

“Sure. I'll have whatever, just as long as it's not tofu.”

“Don't worry; tofu's a dirty word in this place.”

“My kind of restaurant then,” I said, as a waitress appeared with menus. Rossi waved them aside and instead spoke rapid-fire Korean. The waitress scribbled and disappeared.

I felt Rossi's eyes appraising me. She said, “Your file photo doesn't do you justice, Special Agent. They either spent a lot of money on retouching it or the light here isn't doing you any favors.”

“Thanks,” I said. The light had nothing to do with it. My left hand was bandaged and the skin around both eyes and left cheek was alternating between purple and yellow. At least most of the stiffness and soreness from my forced stay in Pakistan had left my body. Basically, I looked worse than I felt. The waitress arrived with a couple of plastic bottles. “What's this?” I inquired.

“Beer,” Rossi announced. “This is the way the locals like it. Doesn't look like beer. Come to think of it, doesn't taste much like beer, either.”

I took a mouthful. Rossi was right on both counts.

“So, what happened to you?” she asked.

“I fell out of a plane without a chute.”

She looked at me, took a sip of her beer, and said, “Don't want to say? Sweet, I can dig it.”

I noticed she also had a silver stud in her tongue. “What's with all the body piercing?”

“The ones in my nose and my ear were for me. And this one,” she said, poking out her tongue and rolling the stud back against her teeth, “this one's for my boyfriend.” This seemed to quell our curiosity about each other, or maybe it was the arrival of the food that did it. The waitress slid the steaming bowls onto our table. “So, what about Chalmers?” I said. “Will he be joining us?”

“No, don't think so.”

“Because?”

“Because something's come up.”

“You wanna spare me the twenty questions, Ms. Rossi?” I said.

“We got confirmation twenty minutes ago. The package has turned up in Bangkok. The Company is working with the Thais, keeping them under surveillance. We have to leave.”

“When?” I asked.

She looked at her watch, then said, “Put it this way. Forget dessert.”