Bamboo and blood

9

After I left Jeno, I sat in the duty vehicle for a few minutes with the engine running and the heater on. Now I was pretty sure she worked at the embassy in Pakistan, or at least found access to a phone there. It was still officially a hunch, but it had become one of those hunches that don't want to get crowded out by other possibilities. Yes, if Pak wanted to argue I'd have to admit it might have been somewhere else; I couldn't prove she'd been in Islamabad. Actually, I wasn't even supposed to prove it; I wasn't supposed to worry about it. It wasn't the sort of fact the broom was supposed to sweep. If the Man with Three Fingers hadn't turned up and sneered, I might have dropped the whole thing, but I didn't want to leave another body lying around my conscience.

The problem was, where to go next? Her husband had an assignment, but doing what? For whom? Her father said she'd complained he was going to get her into trouble. If she was just a wife, how could he get her into trouble with the locals? It wasn't beyond possibility that she had an assignment, too. And if she'd had an assignment, maybe it was connected with why she turned up dead. In that case, there was only one place to begin checking-the Foreign Ministry. It wasn't somewhere I liked to go, but they usually had hot water for tea.

Outside it was frigid but clear, so I decided to leave the car at the hotel and walk. The less I had to drive on slick streets, the better I liked it. There were a few other people out walking, and even a couple of old trucks on the road. I watched them go by, which may be why I didn't notice that the sidewalk down the hill hadn't been cleared. Just as my feet left the ground, an army jeep coming up the hill spun its wheels and slid sideways into a nearby snowdrift. The driver climbed out and looked around. He spotted me on the ground.

"You! Give me a hand." It was an officer, a colonel. Just like I remembered from the army, a colonel always shows up when you least need him. When I didn't move, he bristled. "I said give me a hand. I haven't got all day."

Inquiring why he didn't have a driver didn't seem like a good idea, certainly not while I was on my back. I stood up slowly, careful not to slip again. "I'm on duty, Colonel, and on assignment." It was an assignment I'd given myself, but what the hell. "I'll give you a push, and maybe you can drive me where I need to go. It isn't far."

That bargain didn't seem to go down. "You think you can refuse a direct order from an officer of the People's Army these days? I can have you arrested. I can even have you shot. I can do it myself, if I've a mind."

"You want help on your jeep or don't you?" My feet were getting cold, and my back was sore. If I didn't get somewhere warmer soon, it would stiffen up and I would be hunched over until spring. I wasn't about to stand and argue for a whole afternoon, even a short one in January, with a colonel who didn't rate a driver. He might have me shot, but he didn't look the type to do it himself, certainly not here. There was more and more talk that the army had made a grab for extra status, but that still didn't dictate executing police in broad daylight with no one else in sight. Make sense, you strutting bastard, I thought to myself. Why shoot a monkey to scare the chickens if there are no chickens around to see you do it? Or was it the other way around?

The drive to the Foreign Ministry took less than two minutes. We roared up to the front steps so quickly it startled the sentry, who unfastened the holster at his hip and reached for his pistol. I was barely out of the jeep when the colonel backed into the street at high speed and slid into the square before he regained control, hurrying off in a spray of ice and snow.

The guard had seen me before. He didn't want to move again because if he did, it would disturb the warmth of the posture he had settled into. He flicked his eyes to the door. I went in and up the stairs to the liaison office. I didn't knock.

"Inspector!" The liaison officer had a small electric heater on. That was illegal, but warm. He nodded for me to come over and share the heat. "Is this a pleasant surprise, or have you arrested someone who is going to cause us trouble of a diplomatic sort?"

"I'm on heater patrol."

"Well, you came to the right place." The lights flickered once, then went out. So did the heater. "Funny," he said, "the other day on the radio they announced that the electricity workers had overfulfilled this month's quota."

"Perhaps they were rewarded with today off."

We stood around in the dark, wondering how long it would last this time. Sometimes it was only a few seconds; sometimes it was longer. A few people kept candles in their desks. Apparently, he wasn't one of those. "Don't move, Inspector," he said very softly. "If you move, you'll dissipate the warm air. Just stand still and let it waft slowly up to the ceiling. If we're lucky, Mr. Shin downstairs will do the same, and his heat will be arriving through the floor just as ours goes up to Miss Ban. Imagine the heat going up her legs, will you?"

"I'll do no such thing." I thought about it for a moment, and as I did, the lights went back on. "There, back from vacation. They probably just went out to read the paper. I need a favor-only you owe me, so it really isn't a favor. It's more like payment."

He rubbed his face with both hands, as if he were washing something away, maybe the memory of the last time I had twisted his arm behind his back to give me information. "Very well, though I don't recall your doing anything for me lately."

"Are you going to make me pull your cousin's file again? Selling copper from downed electric lines is still a capital crime."

"What is it I can do for you, Inspector?"

"I need a few facts, that's all."

He was impassive. Finally, he stirred. "If I can."

Just then the lights flickered again, but this time the heater stayed on. "It's the wiring," he said. "The heater draws too much power. You know what they say about this ministry-more heat than light. I'll have to jiggle something."

Maybe people said that about every ministry. "Forget the wires and the cute slogans. I need a woman."

The liaison man looked up, presumably to where Miss Ban sat. "You'll have to get in line, Inspector."

"No, I need information on a woman, a particular woman. She worked in the embassy in Pakistan until recently. Or possibly her husband did. One of them did, anyway. Before that she was in New York." Admittedly, I still didn't know for sure she had even been in Pakistan, but I felt as sure as I could be based on nothing more than a hunch. What I needed was a piece of paper that had it down in black and white. It did no harm to offer up what I thought I knew. If I was wrong, this man would be happy to say so. If I was wrong, I wanted him to smirk and jump in to correct me before he had a chance to realize that maybe it wasn't something he was supposed to do. It was different with the old general. They were like two trees that reacted differently to the same breeze.

"She has a name, I assume."

I wrote it down and pushed it over the desk. He looked, then blew out a puff of air. "A person of interest, apparently. Someone already came and took away her file."

"You saw it before it disappeared?"

"I didn't read it."

"You looked at it; it happened to open as you were retrieving it, and you happened to see something?"

"Some files have clasps on them. This one didn't."

I nodded. "What about the husband?"

"That will take me a while. It's hard to search files when the lights go on and off."

"Give me a call when you find something. If you don't call, I'll be back when you don't expect me, and I might have some wire cutters with me next time." He recoiled slightly. "Find a flashlight somewhere in this building. There's enough light to see the files with that. Maybe Miss Ban can help."

He looked up at the ceiling, but I couldn't see his expression because the lights flickered again and then gave way to the dark. I saw myself out.