Hidden Moon

2

When we got to the Koryo, Boswell said he wanted to see the hotel store, maybe buy some gifts. That was fine with me. I wanted some distance between us. Sitting down and having a drink by myself would have been even better, but there was nowhere to get a drink, so I just sat. Prague. Molloy. I took a deep breath and looked around. No one was interested, no one was paying attention; no one except the man in the brown suit and his friend with the ash club. They were somewhere else, going over what I’d told them and whatever else they knew, or thought they knew. The question was, what did they know? What had they heard about me from the British and, equally important, how? Of course my meeting with Molloy had gone into the files in London; that wasn’t a surprise. And anything that is put in a file runs a risk of coming out again. A file gets pulled on a slow day, and someone gets a bright idea. Alright, it had happened; a slow day and my file had fallen onto someone’s desk. I’d been waiting for the British to make a move; sometimes I forgot about it, but mostly it was just below the surface. I thought it would be something subtle; I hadn’t expected it like this. Not so directly, not in Pyongyang. There was no reason to do it here; it was not only dangerous, it was incredibly inept. If they had wafted word of my meeting with Molloy onto the winds that blew over Pyongyang, why send someone so soon afterward? Or had Pyongyang known about this for a long time? Had they been waiting, too? I imagined what the report looked like in the file that the man in brown had on his desk. Probably neatly typed. Maybe with a photo taken of me as I walked out the door that night in Prague.

I stood up and strolled around the lobby. If Boswell had any other moves, he’d have to make them soon. I wasn’t going to give him any encouragement; in fact, I was going to get as far away as I could from him. Anything I did in his presence would be misinterpreted, by both him and the man in brown. Tonight I’d tell Min to assign someone else to this escort duty, that I couldn’t do it. Then I’d go home and wait for a knock on the door.

I walked over to the front desk. “I need a room for a visitor.” I showed the clerk my ID.

“I’m sure you do. But we don’t have any.”

“All I need is a simple room for that man.” I pointed at Boswell, who was examining the lobby. “I’m not asking for the royal suite.” I showed the clerk my ID again. “Someone must have a record of the reservation.” I knew there wasn’t one, Min had already made clear the Ministry had botched this, but I might as well put the clerk on the defensive. “If you have misplaced it, just assign a room. I don’t have all day to stand and argue with you. The hotel isn’t full.”

“I saw your ID the first time, Inspector. And tonight, I’d suggest the roving patrols should be doubled on the river between midnight and