Hidden Moon

7

After the interrogation, they let me sleep a few hours. When they woke me, the first thing they asked was if I was alright. My shoulder hurt; my hip hurt. “Fine,” I said. They asked if I wanted a doctor to look at me. I told them no, and they had me sign a form that said I’d refused the offer. They said that I was free to go and that they would drop me off where I wanted. “Maybe a restaurant near my office.” They said it was my choice; they helped me up, and we went to a car parked outside. It was night. I didn’t know for sure how long I’d been there; I couldn’t even remember where I had been when they picked me up. We drove for about thirty minutes, from somewhere out in the country. It was cloudy and very dark, and it wasn’t until we finally got on a road I recognized that I realized we were coming into the city from the east. The car stopped; the man in the front seat beside the driver turned and said we were at the restaurant I’d requested. I could get whatever I wanted to eat. They’d pay for it, he said. He imparted this information morosely, as if he didn’t agree with the practice but hadn’t been consulted.

“Well, then,” I said, “thanks again for everything.” I got out with difficulty. I’d barely closed the door when the car pulled away.

The restaurant was half full. No one looked up when I dragged myself across the room. I took a table against the wall, so I could lean back and take some strain off my shoulder. After something to eat and a drink, I’d go home to sleep. In the morning, I’d start full bore on the case, no more half measures, no more wondering what its importance was, or to whom. It was vitally important, above all to me. I still didn’t know whose toes I’d stepped on, or even if that was the right part of the anatomy. But it was clear I couldn’t back off. If I solved it-and it was going to end up involving more than a bank robbery, that I knew-the odds were I wouldn’t have to go back to that room with the ash club. Which would be good, because if I did have to go back, the next time they sat me in that chair, I might not stand up again. I closed my eyes, and when I opened them, the man in the brown suit was standing beside me.

“May I join you, Inspector?” What a silly question. Of course the man could join me. From here on out, he practically owned me. It was clear he could haul me back whenever it suited him, as long as he thought I knew something about whatever it was that was such a threat to someone at the center. I absolutely didn’t want to sit in that darkness again. Better if he came to visit me, someplace I could see his eyes. “I was saving it for a beautiful woman, but she didn’t show up. So, please.” I nodded toward the chair opposite me.

The man smiled. There was nothing menacing in it. His face had taken on more color. This close, in the light, I could see he had an intelligent manner. “No hard feelings, I hope, Inspector. We checked, we double-checked, we decided you were not the man we were after. What can I say? You’ll accept my apology, surely. Let me buy you a drink.”

The last thing in the world I wanted was to let him buy me a drink. “Of course, I would be honored.”

What shall we have for such an occasion? Something out of the ordinary, I think. They probably have something they shouldn’t, hidden away in the rear. These places always do. Excuse me.” He got up and limped to a door at the back of the room, knocked once, then turned the handle and walked in. A minute or so later, he emerged with a bottle in his hand. “This is good Scotch,” he said. “Real Scotch. Not that colored water everyone drinks.” The waitress brought over two glasses. “Better without ice.” He poured some into my glass and then poured his own. After he held up his glass to the light, he looked at mine and laughed. “Here’s to friendship, Inspector, wherever we find it.”

The rest of the evening came out of the bottle. We drank until I couldn’t sit up straight, but the more he drank, the more dignified he seemed to become. Some people get sloppy when they drink; not him. Eventually, he asked if I wanted to know why he limped. I shrugged. “Of course you do, Inspector. Something for you to think about. Learn a lesson.”

He had been sentenced to a labor camp as a young man, a fifteen-year sentence for not reporting a conversation with a visiting Hungarian. “My elder sister had been sent to Budapest during the war; they thought she was an orphan, and the Hungarians took her in along with hundreds of others. She was there for several years, learned Hungarian, went to school, almost married a Hungarian man, but something happened and she finally came back to teach. She took ill one day and a week later was dead. It was a shock, let me tell you.”

Though I was drunk, I watched his every move, one step removed, as if I were watching myself observing him. He wasn’t the interrogator anymore, no trace of it. He sat across from me, dignified and composed, in contrast to my inability to keep my head upright. I sloshed my drink. He drank his with a careful flourish. Each time he raised the glass, it began a ritual, an elaborate code, a tribal ceremony that had a beginning, a middle, and an end. The glass went up to his mouth, he took a small sip, then lifted the glass slightly before it began a downward arc, his sleeve seemed to billow, his elbow ticked out an elegant degree or so, and as the glass settled onto the table, he smacked his lips, once.

He never gestured when he spoke, except when he was drinking. At first I assumed it was the alcohol, but then I realized it was the glass in his hand. He used the glass to point, to emphasize an argument, to indicate a joke was coming or had just been made. I could tell from the way he did this that the size of the glass made no difference, nor its shape. The glass didn’t have to be full. But it couldn’t be empty. He never gestured with an empty glass.

As an interrogator, the man in the brown suit was in complete control. He sent that message in a way that you understood, precisely, without any doubt. When he asked a question, you were forced to concentrate on his voice. That was why he stood in shadow. No distractions, no physical cues, no watching his hands or even the slightest play of emotion around the lips, unless that’s what he wanted you to see. No eye contact, only his words. But what had begun as technique had taken over completely. He was left with this and this alone-only the glass in his hand freed him.

He took a sip, waved the glass in my direction, then started it again on its journey to the table. “After she died, I wanted to thank the Hungarians, but I didn’t know how to do it, so I hung around outside their embassy. I saw someone at the corner, a Westerner. I walked over and asked him if he understood Korean. He said he did, that he was Hungarian and could carry on a conversation if I didn’t speak too fast. I told him I was grateful to the Hungarian people for taking care of my sister, that she had spoken highly of them and their country, and that I hoped to be able to repay the debt. He smiled and said if I came back to this corner the next afternoon, at the same time, he would drive by and pick me up.” The glass was empty; he pushed it aside and composed himself. Sitting very still, he continued, “The next day when I got to the corner, a security man emerged from behind a tree. He said I was to come with him. They said the foreigner I had talked to was a Hungarian spy, and that I had disgraced the country. I wrote a confession. I was shaken, believe me. They put me in the back of a truck with ten other young men, and a woman who was weeping, and we drove off to a camp in the mountains.” He stopped talking, just stopped, as if he had run out of words.

“Bad luck,” I said softly.

Anyone else might have laughed, or roared in protest, or sighed. He sat motionless. Finally he put his fingers around his glass and tipped it back and forth. “When I got out I was a little older, thinner, and had this limp. Ash, the guards carried clubs made of ash. Mostly they kept order by shouting at us and waving the clubs. But one of the guards took an instant dislike to me, no reason, he just did. He tried everything he could to kill me. One day he beat me so hard his club broke. I couldn’t move for a month. I finally healed, all except for my leg. Six years into my sentence, a car drove up to the gate, a colonel got out, and they hustled me over to him. He asked if I was well, I said I was. He asked if I had been fed, I said I had. He told me I had been wrongly sentenced, that the vermin responsible had been punished, and that I was now free to serve the people. He shook my hand, looked around at the other prisoners, and led me out the gate to his car.”

“Luck changes.” I could hear I was mumbling, but it wasn’t my main concern. By now I couldn’t keep my eyes open.

“That’s how things happened in the old days, Inspector. In the old days, you wouldn’t be here right now.”

In a sudden spurt of clarity, I sat up. “You been watching me long? I saw you on the train, you were watching me.”

He moved back his chair. “Put your head on the table and sleep a little. I’m sure we’ll meet again.” I didn’t see him leave, but I heard the irregular gait of his footsteps disappear into the long night.