Bamboo and blood

Chapter Two

Jeno talked, and I listened. He referred to his list of travel requests, said he could do without meeting anyone from the party, emphasized again and again how there were people who wanted him to succeed while he was here and thus it depended on me to help him do that. He mentioned that virtue was its own reward, but added that additional recompense was not beyond question. He threw in a few comments about bikinis and suntan lotion, but then his teeth started chattering so badly I decided we'd better get back to the hotel. At the front entrance, he repeated that there were dangers all around us, birds of prey circling and so forth.

I dismissed this as an exaggeration brought on by exposure to extreme cold. I'd seen it happen in the army when we were on guard duty for extended periods in winter. Frostbite of the brain, someone called it. I stuck around the hotel and kept my eyes open for the next twenty-four hours, nevertheless. I wandered through the lobby; I sat drinking tea; I shuffled into the hotel store and chatted with the salesgirls. I went up to the front door and looked outside. Nothing untoward occurred; nothing even looked about to occur. Day moved to night and back again without a hint of the unusual. There were no signs of bodily harm in preparation. People weren't hanging around the vicinity of the hotel where they shouldn't be. That was easy enough to see because the streets were empty. No one could be inconspicuous in this weather. Just in case, as I left to return to the office, I told the chief security man at the hotel to keep tabs on Jeno, something beyond their normal routine. I didn't completely trust the hotel staff or the BSD men hanging around, but there wasn't much I could do about that. We didn't have enough people left in the office to assign against phantoms, not new phantoms, anyway. The old phantoms were taking up all available personnel.

When I got back to the office and told Pak what Jeno had said, I thought he would laugh. He didn't. "That's all of it?" he asked.

"Every word." Some of what Jeno told me had been intended only for my ears, or at least that's what he implied. But I don't keep secrets from Pak, not when it comes to work. We don't always put it in the files, but I make sure Pak knows everything I know-almost everything.

"Go back there and sit around," Pak said. "I don't trust those security men, none of them. There's a reason they work at the hotel, and it isn't a good one. All I want is for our guest to leave in one piece. That's not too much to ask, is it, Inspector?"

I'd just spent a full day and night moping around the Koryo, watching the security men watch me. Why would I want to go back?

"The hotel has hot water," Pak said. This was true; they had more than the Foreign Ministry.

"The duty car is acting funny. You don't mind if I take yours?"

"Why should I mind? You take my car all the time." He tossed me the keys. "If you spin out on a patch of ice, don't call me, I don't want to know."

Back at my desk, I opened the top drawer and did a careful inventory. If I was going to sit doing nothing in the hotel, I might as well have a piece of wood that would help me sort through the case. Something pragmatic. Elm was good in that way. Most trees succumb to nonsense at some point in their lives. They get top-heavy. They forget their roots. Not elms. From beginning to end, they remain stately and pragmatic. I had a piece of elm somewhere.

"Get moving, O!" Pak yelled down the hall. "I don't want to explain to the Minister that something happened to our guest while my inspector was pawing through scraps of wood." I grabbed the first piece I could find. Acacia. Suboptimal for the work at hand, but it would have to do.

When I got to the hotel, I spotted Jeno sitting on a bench on the second floor. He waved but didn't make a move to join me. Well, I thought, if the molehill won't come to Mohammed.

"I'm tired of being in my room," he said as I stepped off the escalator. "There isn't a lot on TV at this hour, and I'm out of things to read." There was a book next to him on the bench.

Just then, three girls walked by in single file. The first one, pretending to be busy thinking, stared straight ahead. The second smiled and nodded, almost gaily. The last one looked away, a deliberate gesture. It was probably as close to haughty as she dared. They were all the same age, not more than twenty or twenty-one. The second one had her hair tied in the back with a blue bow. Otherwise, they were dressed nearly identically in bright-colored traditional Korean skirts and jackets.

"Did you see that, Inspector?" Jeno watched as the trio disappeared around a corner. "I love those dresses."

"I wasn't looking." Of course I'd seen it. Who wouldn't look at three girls floating by like ribbons in an April breeze?

"Nice to see something colorful for a change."

"Next week is Lunar New Year; that means the flowers can't be far away. It's built into people's genes, this sort of rhythm. You find it quaint, I suppose."

"Not at all. Beside the dresses, you know what I noticed? Three girls, three separate reactions when they passed by."

"Three. Were you expecting more, or less?"

"Why do you think the girl in the middle smiled? Why wasn't she afraid like the other two?"

"None of them was afraid. What do they have to be afraid of?"

"You tell me."

"Three girls went by. They weren't triplets. Is there any reason they should react the same? Are they trained dogs?"

"It was a simple question."

"Good."

"Only a harmless observation."

"Fine."

Jeno pulled out his wallet. "Let me show you something." He handed me a photograph of a group of schoolboys. Each confronted the camera in a different way. "This is my son"-he pointed at one of the boys-"and his friends. Look at them."

"I'm looking."

"Not trained dogs?"

"No."

"So what makes them react so differently, so individually to the very same instant in time, just when the shutter clicks?"

"You have a theory?"

"No, it just interests me. I wonder about it. I'd say you do, too. All the time, you wonder about reality. Why does one person stand here and not there? Who moves to the front in a group? Who hangs back? Who smiles? Who smirks? Who stares into the lens? And most important, the question that nags constantly-why?"

"And the answer is?"

"You're not following me, Inspector."

"I think I am. You're trying to figure out whether I'm the bird that flies off the tree first, or if I wait for the others. You're trying to figure out whether I'm the schoolboy who smiles at the stranger, or if I'm the one who looks away. Do I wave when your car goes by, or do I stare impassively?"

"Cossacks, you're seeing Cossacks again, Inspector. But thank you. I think you just answered my question. Now I have another one for you."

"I'm listening."

"Remember what I told you the other day? I need to make contact with someone. Can you help me?"

"No. I hate to be impolite to a guest, but absolutely not. I cannot help you do anything but stay out of trouble. Why don't we sit and wait for more groups of girls to walk by. They do that every so often. It passes the time, and as long as you only look, it's harmless. Besides, it's comparatively warm in here right now. Making contact with anyone means going outside."

Jeno passed me the book, his finger on the edge of an envelope between the pages. "They were sold out of volume twenty-two, but the lady assured me this one was equally as good." His eyebrows did that bouncy, energetic dance the visiting Russian troupes always performed near the end of one of their programs. They call it a country quadrille. I just wasn't sure what country.