Hidden Moon

5

The next morning, Han was sitting in the office; Min was looking out the window. Neither spoke, and from the way the air was not moving, they hadn’t said much in the last several minutes. Han looked exhausted, like he had been up all night. When Min turned around, he had a bandage on his forehead.

“What happened to you?” I waited at the door.

“Don’t stand there, Inspector. Come in and sit down.” Min put his hand to his head. “No one believes it, but I fainted. About three o’clock this morning, I finally got home and opened the door. Next thing I knew, I was on the floor. Not fainted, exactly. I’d say it was more like I collapsed, keeled over.” He paused and waited.

“Swooned.” Han shrugged. “In the middle of the biggest damned incident of the century, your chief inspector fell over. Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone.” He stood up and straightened his cuffs. His shirt was clean, fresher than he was. “Someone might think you did good work on this one, Inspector. I don’t. So I’ll tell you what. Say something nice about me in your report, I’ll do likewise. Of course, they’re going to come down hard on you about Yang, but that will be for your ministry to deal with. There are enough problems to go around.”

I wasn’t in the mood to be threatened, not by Han. “What report? I’m not writing anything. You were in the lead, Han. That means you get to explain all the shot-up trees in the cemetery, and why nobody can find two Germans, one of whom has a hunting rifle and is an excellent shot. You took over the investigation, you deal with it. I suppose your report will include something on the bank manager. Like who she really is. Or did she work for you?”

Han shook his head slowly. “That woman came out of nowhere. And she’s protected, I don’t know by whom. You were right, she doesn’t have a file, or if she does, whoever has it is keeping it out of sight.”

“No one comes out of nowhere, Han. What about the clerk, for example? She came from somewhere. Who approved her for the bank? She didn’t just walk in the front door and ask for a job. Something’s missing from her file, incidentally. She was inside for the bank robbery, wasn’t she?”

“Her?” Han put on his sunglasses. “No, she was working for us the whole time. At least we got that much right.”

“That’s what you’ll put in your report, I suppose. Actually, did you know she was working for Boswell?”

“For Boswell? Very unlikely. In fact, impossible.” Though he didn’t seem completely sure. “What makes you think that?”

I hadn’t liked Han from the beginning, and I didn’t like him now, especially because I still didn’t know who he was working for. “Boswell was part of whoever it was on the outside that planned the bank robbery, which you probably knew. He was well acquainted with the Germans, which you might have known. And he was here to supervise the assassination attempt, at least make sure the final steps came off smoothly, which you may have guessed. You were supposed to disrupt the plan, watch it as it developed, and then disrupt it at the end, the very end. I was just along to give you an excuse to stay close. Yang was the bait; he was supposed to get as many wolves after him as possible. The man was so confused, he was willing to do it. You must have made sure Yang was at the scene, at the guesthouse, because Boswell didn’t. In fact, Boswell was unhappy Yang was in the car; he was suspicious about who Yang was working for.”

Han sat down and took off his glasses. “What does that have to do with the bank clerk?”

“The clerk was seen with the Germans in the hills, at that temple. I don’t think she was there to make a donation.”

“The old man has disappeared. We need to talk to him.”

“You need to talk to a lot of people, especially Boswell, but he’s dead, and so is Yang.” The man in brown wouldn’t be happy I told Han. Not that I cared.

Han seemed to relax. “Well, well.” He stood up again and walked to the door. “Remember that desk, the one in the bank? You were right, it was pine on the outside. But inside it was something else.”

“Like what?”

“Something hard, sort of pretty. Rare, maybe. The desk was rebuilt so it could handle special equipment. All new.”

“SSD?”

“Don’t make me laugh. Since when does SSD know how to handle special equipment? They can’t even deal with their own phones.”

“What about the wood? You mind if I take a look?”

“I don’t mind, but I don’t think it will do you any good. After we took the desk apart, I told them to burn it.” He smiled, then turned to go. “I never fixed your cell phone, did I, Inspector. Sorry, it looks like you’re stuck with it.” He fluttered his hands delicately. “Oh, and one more thing. Yang and the bank clerk were related, did you know that? She was his niece. Her aunt died in that fire.”

Min put his head in his hands.