Hidden Moon

8

It wasn’t until the shadows were too long to do us any good that the phone rang.

It was a deep voice speaking in accented but unmistakably angry Korean. “I’m back. More precisely, I’m at your front gate. The guards won’t let me in.”

“Good.” I looked out the window and saw Boswell on the gate phone. I waved.

He made a rude gesture. “We have work to do, Inspector,” he said.

“Maybe we did an hour ago. Now we have nothing. And I’m plenty busy with my own business, you might consider that.”

“I bring greetings from Kazakhstan.”

“I’ll bet you do.” I was smoothing the scrap of chestnut with my fingers. It was dark, like my thoughts. I laughed at myself. “Alright, put the guard on, I’ll tell him not to shoot you.”

When Boswell got upstairs, I was standing by the window. “What do you know about chaos theory?” I asked as I heard him step into the room and sit down on the chair against the wall.

“Why?”

“Interested, that’s all.”

“Not much. Something along the lines that events happen according to no particular plan and in no particular order, that a minor event in one place can set off ripples that cause major developments somewhere else. The usual example is a butterfly flapping its wings.”

“Yes, and what happens after that?”

“I don’t know, a vast storm halfway around the world. Air currents, I guess. I don’t much care for chaos. Certainly not in our line of work.”

“Still, chaos is interesting, don’t you think?”

“No, I’ve seen it happen on soccer fields too many times. It’s messy.”

I smiled and turned around to face him. “You know what I would like to do someday? I’d like to bathe in chaos, stand under it like you would under a waterfall and have it cascade over my body. Maybe drown myself in it and be swept into a vast nothingness.”

“Whew. Heavy thinking, Inspector. Had a wee nip of the barley after lunch?”

I turned back to the window and waved my arms.

“What was that, if I may ask?” Bosworth was peering at the files on my desk; I could see his reflection in the window.

“Check the weather in England in a few days.”

“Aye, I will.”

“Did you get your money laundered?” He sat back as I turned around again.

“Something bothering us, Inspector?”

“I could get in a lot of trouble, leaving you at the bank like that. That bank was robbed a while ago.”

“Robbed? In this city?”

“You know it was. And you know who the manager is. Don’t toy with me, Superintendent. Many things I can endure, but don’t toy with me.”

“Right, I’ll rephrase the question. What makes you say I already know?”

“Your people at the embassy will have told you something about life ‘in this city,’ as you put it. Certainly the events at the bank will have come up, among other things. How long have you known her?”

I thought he would dodge the question, or pause. He did neither. “Long time ago, when we were all much younger, Inspector. I didn’t know she was here, until the embassy told me. I’m glad I went over there. She knows the Germans.”

“One of them pinched her fanny.”

“Yes, well, that makes it easy. Shouldn’t be too hard to find a German who sings castrato.”

“Tell me about the Germans.”

“Tell me about the bank robbery first.”

“What does that have to do with your mission? And unless you tell me so that it’s believable, there’s nothing I can share about the robbery-nothing beyond what the lady with the tiny waist has probably already told you.”

Boswell crossed his arms and regarded me thoughtfully. Finally, he slapped his hands on his knees. “Alright. I’m going to regret this, but alright. There have been a number of bank robberies over the past several years across Europe, by one gang operating always from the inside.”

“A number. Any special number? Never mind, go on.”

“Some time ago, two banks were hit in Germany.”

“There were two Germanys. One for each.” This was a small lie on my part, seeing that I had read something about the case. But the Scotsman was supposed to be supplying me with information; our deal had not specified that I tell him anything that I knew. More to the point, everything and anything he told me was suspect. He would tell me exactly what he wanted me to hear and no more. He would tell me because that’s what they needed me to know. Or think. Or imagine. It was probably part of his mission, to feed me something. Okay, I wasn’t learning anything from him; he sure as hell wasn’t going to learn anything from me.

“No, this was after unification.” He looked at me with a hint of suspicion. “Although now that you mention it, one of the banks was in the former East, the other in the West.”

“I continue to listen, Superintendent, but I’ve yet to hear anything relevant to me.”

“Patience, laddie.” He grinned. “That’s a term of endearment.”

“Or condescension.”

“For heaven’s sake, man, give me a break, can’t you? Don’t be such a…” He hesitated.

“Cowering beastie,” I finished his thought. “Never mind, we’ll deal with the insults in due course. Just get on with it, the Germans.” This I wanted to hear. Maybe it would give me a clue why one of them had been racing through the streets a week ago with blood on his shirt.

“Well, your two Germans were working in those banks, Jurgen in the West and Dieter in the East. They’re old radicals, from the days when people were still moved by ideas and killed capitalists for reasons no one understood. Them together, here. And you just having had a robbery. A curious coincidence, one might say.”

“But they didn’t work in our bank.”

“No, but they did business at your bank. They were inside it many times, I’m told. According to the manager”-he coughed-“they hung around and made sheep’s eyes at her.”

“I still see no relevance.”

“You don’t? We need to get them off the street. They’re dangerous. You must be blind, man. I would have thought law and order were right up your alley.”

“No, not blind. Cautious, maybe. I need something more. You say ‘we’ need to get them off the street, but it isn’t your street, Superintendent, it’s mine. Perhaps in Scotland you could roll up a couple of Germans on suspicion and the German government would politely applaud. I can’t do that here. It will cause nothing but grief. We will be accused by foreign governments of abuse of power, extrajudicial proceedings, violation of human rights. Where’s the proof, we’ll be asked. The German ambassador will be phoning and knocking on doors, sending notes here, there, and everywhere. Where’s the proof, I’ll be asked. And my answer is, well, I can’t answer that-because you don’t want me to quote you, am I right?”

The Scotsman sat quiet, composed, resigned.

“Thank you for not giving me an argument.” I reached down and picked up the Criminal Code. “What do you suppose would happen if I cited the relevant articles in this? More international protest, calls for diplomatic pressure, Europeans roaring about our lack of due process. The best I can do is put them under surveillance. But these Germans are guilty, that’s what you think.”

“A fine point of law, Inspector. I think they could be guilty of something, or at least of planning to participate in something that would make them guilty. The facts at least raise a reasonable suspicion. Surely your procedures allow detention on the basis of reasonable suspicion. I mean, this is Pyongyang.” He paused, held up his hand to ward off any objection, closed his eyes, and nodded his head. “Forget I said that. But there is more, one more thing I want you to know.”

I studied the molding on the ceiling. “Proceed as you wish, Superintendent. I’m afraid there isn’t much more for us to discuss.”

“As near as we can tell, all of the bank robberies are connected, in some way or another, with political motives. These are not thieves who want to buy gold neck chains and sun themselves in Majorca.” He paused again. “That’s an island.”

“I have seen globes, Superintendent. Even ours suggest the world is round.” The world is round, bank robberies have political motives, and I suddenly had no idea what game this man was playing. None. Next he would ask me if I wanted to invest in a joint venture harvesting a forest of Sogdian ash. Or if I would like a new hip. Maybe he could get me one made in Spain. I always wanted to move like a Spaniard.

“The point is, Inspector, these two Germans may be here for something else, something political.”

My color must have gone bad. The Scotsman blinked at me. “You alright?”

I sat down. “Now it’s my turn to share something. Your undersecretary may be in danger.”

The Scottish neck muscles tightened; a deep breath filled the chest. The voice took on a rock-bound hardness. “Explain that.”

“It’s all I know. Information I’ve never seen, from a source unknown.”

“Where was it, written on the walls of the jakes, for crying out loud!”

“The what?”

“Never mind. It’s Shakespeare. Fuck Shakespeare.”

That shook me a little. I thought English people only spoke in awe of Shakespeare. Maybe the Scots didn’t. Boswell lowered his voice. “If you have information that a British official is in imminent danger in your country, why didn’t you let me know immediately?”

“Frankly, I didn’t believe it. I still don’t. There have never been threats to visitors to this country, official or otherwise. You’ve had some problems, I seem to recall. Us, never.”

“Oh, really, what did you have in mind?”

“Bulgarians. Libyans. Irishmen. Maybe Palestinians, though I may be wrong.”

“You never had a bank robbery before, either, I’m guessing.”

“True.”

Neither of us spoke. The Scotsman flexed the fingers on one hand to let off the tension. He seemed to grow more agitated by the minute, like a large tree whose branches sway and fight the wind. I had thought he was supremely calm; I thought height gave a perspective that gave way to a steadiness those of us closer to the ground cannot afford. For myself, I was not so much agitated as glum, wondering whether things were heading toward a shootout in a cemetery. I wondered which one it would be. The Martyrs’ Cemetery outside of town would be an interesting place, the busts of honored revolutionaries shattering as bullets whizzed around.

“That’s it, then, Inspector.” Boswell stood up slowly, unfolding toward the ceiling. “We cancel the visit.”

“On what basis?”

“Basis? The threat, what else do we need? I don’t plan to be covered by the undersecretary’s bloody brains before I make up my mind.”

I shrugged. “You are assuming the threat is to his person.”

“Ah, well, then, perhaps in your country you have different gradations of threat than we do. Let me see, there could be a threat to his moral dignity, to his reputation, to his financial probity, maybe to his family escutcheon. Yes, of course, Inspector, someone is coming here to smear his family name! Don’t be idiotic. I’m canceling the visit, and then I’m leaving.”

“You don’t care who might be threatening one of your officials, or why?”

“This is your country, it is your problem,” he grumbled.

“How do you know these people won’t try again, in another country? Maybe even in yours?”

Boswell paused in midgrumble. He cocked his head and looked at me through what were for him unusually narrowed eyes. “What are you suggesting?”

“Nothing in particular. You can’t leave until Tuesday anyway, when the next flight takes off. The visitor doesn’t arrive until several days after that. We still have plenty of time to think about this. You can cancel his visit as late as next Tuesday, even Wednesday if you want to spend a few extra days here. Meantime, I can figure out if there is something more to do about the two Germans. And we can go over the security details as many times as you like.”

Boswell sat down. “Right. I apologize if I seem rattled. Jet lag, maybe. Something about this place-” He paused. “Let it go.”

“No, what about this place?”

“Now, don’t be getting angry on me. But the stress levels go up, something in the air, maybe not for you, but there it is. Since I arrived, I’ve had a sense that people are holding their breath-no, not people, but the place, the whole place. It is holding its breath.”

I took the scrap of chestnut out of my pocket and smoothed it with my fingers for a long moment. “Let me tell you something, Superintendent. People breathe perfectly normally here.” I opened the desk drawer and put the piece of wood carefully to one side, lining it up so the thick end was against a brown pencil. Then I closed the drawer and took a deep breath. “But the butterflies”-I smiled-“they don’t flap their wings.”

The Scotsman hesitated, looked out the window, then settled back in his chair and nodded.