Hidden Moon

7

“I need to see a list of all UK passport holders in the country, and any Irishmen to boot.”

“I’m not sure I can do that.” Irishmen, he said. In the distance, I heard a warning flag snapping in the stiff spring wind.

“Inspector, you must have records you can access, shouldn’t take but half a second. In this of all countries, you must know where people are.”

“Of course.” I snapped my fingers, then looked around the office. “Funny, last time I did that, things appeared instantly.” The superintendent was sitting in my office, his long legs stretched to the edge of my desk. “Perhaps you don’t understand, James, my friend.” I kicked myself, hard. A sarcastic reference to Boswell as “my friend” would go down on a transcript as just that-“my friend.” I never knew a transcriber with an ear for humor. “ ‘Access’ is not a word that has any particular meaning to me. The records at the border are kept by the immigration section. They consist of scraps of paper that tend to tear or otherwise fall apart. The Foreign Ministry has records of visa applications, but these are kept separate, and are available only to the immigration people, who ask for them at the last minute, when they realize their own forms have gone missing or been trashed. The police, in whose offices you sit, have ‘access,’ as you put it, to exactly nothing. I couldn’t even squeeze out the license number of a bus the other day without a fight.”

“And did you get it?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“So you can’t get me a list of UK citizens in your country. Your government has no way of contacting them in an emergency.”

“Ah, that’s different. Pose a different issue, open different windows. If needed, we could ask the provincial police to help. People have to register with the local authorities. But that would take longer than you have, perhaps. Surely your embassy has its own records. It urges your citizens to keep in touch when they are here, am I right?”

“I don’t want the embassy to know I am doing this check. I don’t want anyone, other than you, Inspector, to know.”

“Wonderful, now I am conspiring with a British policeman against his own government. It might work.” I paused to consider, then shook my head. “No, too many angles. Anyhow, even if I did have a list, how would I justify giving you the names of Irish citizens, though I doubt there are any in my country. Ireland is a sovereign state, or am I wrong in my geography?” It was dancing with death to raise the subject of Ireland, I knew it. I opened my desk drawer and began feeling around for the Burmese rosewood, anything to tranquilize me.

“Inspector, we agreed that you would help me and I would help you.”

“So we did. But nowhere in our agreement was there anything about lists, or access to records. Let’s go at this another way. You don’t really care about all UK citizens. You have a particular few individuals in mind, though you would rather I not know who they are.”

The long legs shifted and the Scottish mouth set itself in a slight frown.

“Actually, I don’t care who you meet, James. Meet whoever you please, if you can find them and think you are invisible so that no one will see you doing it. Invite them all to your room for a drink and throw the phones in the toilet to be safe, if that is what you want to do. But I’m not going into any records. I have enough trouble getting access to them for my own cases; I can’t be doing it on behalf of Her Majesty’s Government.”

“How about Germans?”

Somehow, it wasn’t a surprise; he wanted the Germans, so of course he started out asking me about something else. “Who do you want to see, Dieter or Jurgen?”

The Scotsman leaned back and smiled. “I’ll be damned.”

“Never mind, you don’t have to tell me which. Both of them are staying in the Sosung Hotel, near the golf driving range. They sit on the balcony and drink the day away while they watch young women chase golf balls.” Ever since I put them on twenty-four-hour surveillance, they had done nothing, gone nowhere. Neither of them had a shirt with blood on it, either.

“You’ve met them?”

“In a manner of speaking.” There was someone else he wanted to see; I could tell from the way he sat, trying to frame the question so it would seem innocent. “Perhaps you need to go the bank?”

His eyes never flickered. “You are a son of a bitch, you know that?”

On the drive to the Gold Star Bank, Boswell seemed preoccupied. When I pulled over and parked under the big trees, he sat still for a moment before turning toward me. “I have a favor to ask, Inspector. Let me out here. You go back to your office. I know the way to the hotel, and I need some time to think. I’ll call you when I get back, in about an hour or two, you have my word. Then we can drive the route again; the shadows should be right by that time.”

“Shadows.” I shrugged and looked out my window. “Wrong shadows. Right shadows. I think you are obsessed with these shadows.” I turned to him. “I could wait out here, if money dealings embarrass you.”

“Thanks, but not necessary.” He spoke carefully and nodded toward the bank. “Let’s let it lie, shall we?”

“Be sure and count your change, that’s all I’ve got to say. And don’t get lost on the way back to the hotel, or I’ll have to explain how you happened to be on your own.” I watched him cross the street, just to make sure no buses suddenly appeared.