The Man with the Baltic Stare

In the line standing at the front desk was a man whose wig was not straight. This was the sort of thing I used to focus on right away. These days, I might not have paid attention if not for the young woman on his arm. She was golden brown all over from what I could see, and I could see plenty. The fish on the carpet were goggle-eyed.

The bellboy was standing next to me. “My lucky day,” he said. “Brazilians! Hot! Hot! Hot!” He wiggled his hips. The people in line turned to watch him. The golden one put out her arms and made a noise with her tongue. Then she laughed. The man in the crooked wig laughed. The desk clerk-busy collecting passports and giving out room keys-frowned in concentration, but the group laughed as it did the samba up the stairs.

“You want a list of their rooms?” The bellboy had loaded the luggage onto his cart and was pushing it toward the elevator. “You never know when one of them will get lonely. Beautiful people. Very hot.”

“You fool around with tourists and you’ll get a one-way ticket to a coal mine.”

“These days? My, oh my, Inspector. You are a relic. We interact; that’s the word. We interact globally. Boy, I’d like to interact with the Golden One. Why don’t you have a drink with her friend later? Give us an hour or three.” He winked at me as the elevator door closed.

I walked twelve floors up to my room and was sitting on the bed catching my breath, thinking about what Kim had told me, when an envelope came under my door. The note was on the hotel’s stationery. “Drinks at 4:30?” No signature. At 4:15, I went down to the bar and made my way to the darkest corner, farthest from the door.

“You don’t have any customers,” I said to the bartender as I walked past him. “I’m not here.”

“So what else is new?” he said. “Don’t tell me, you just want to sit.”

No one came in at 4:30. A few minutes later, a wig poked through the door. “This the bar?”

“It’s not the bus station,” said the bartender. “Have a drink?”

The rest of the man stepped inside and immediately was searching the corners of the room. “Sure,” he said at last. I could tell from the way he moved that he’d seen me. “A bottle of vodka, if you please, senhor. And two glasses.”

He sat down at the table next to mine. “Sorry to have kept you, Inspector.”

“Not at all, Luís,” I said. “I’ve been expecting you.”

The bartender appeared. “Finnish vodka. The label came off the bottle, but I know it’s Finnish.” He put down the glasses. “Why don’t you sit together? That way I don’t have to wipe off two tables. I think there’s another bottle somewhere if you finish this one, so go ahead and drink yourselves silly.”

When we were alone again, Luís straightened his wig. “I love Brazilian girls, but they can be rough.”

“Already? You just got here. Besides, I thought you were Portuguese.”

“I am. But your consulate people were rejecting all Portuguese passports, wouldn’t even take any extra money for the visa. I figured it must be serious. That’s why I didn’t get here when I promised.”

“I didn’t realize you’d make the next flight. I was worried someone had come up behind you in a dark alley.”

“Nothing so dramatic. I went back to the office, rummaged around in the bottom drawer of my desk, and came up with something from Brazil. I nearly forgot I had it.”

“And the wig?”

“It wasn’t what I would have chosen if I’d had more time. Work with what you have-that’s what they teach us. It fit better in China. Something about the air here makes it slip.”

“What have you got for me?”

“You want to talk now?”

“This is good, better than going for a walk. That only attracts flies. Don’t worry about the bartender.”

“All right. It’s simple. Remember those security tapes I told you about? The ones taken in the hallway? I heard they were altered. New times put on. Who knows when that Russian girl was there? That’s not all that was fixed, I bet.”

“I think I know how to get something more on the tapes. But that still leaves a problem. Either he brought out a bleeding suitcase or he didn’t. What difference does the time make?”

“Maybe it wasn’t him that came out.”

I thought about it. “Back up a second. Has anyone seen him in the meantime?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Would you know?”

“I know people who would know.”

“Has anyone heard from him?”

“Messages, I’m told. I haven’t seen them. I haven’t asked to see them. I prefer not to see them.”

“Phone messages?”

“No.”

“So they’re written, these days maybe e-mail or whatever else they use. Birdsongs, I don’t know. Anyone could be sending them in his name. In other words, he could be missing.”

“Yes.”

“OK, so he could be dead.”

“Didn’t I imply that?”

“New problem: Who wanted him dead?”

“We call that ‘motive.’ ”

“The old rectification of names. Call it by its right name and it gets you most of the way you want to go. I call it someone-wanted-to-make-sure-he-was-out-of-the-way. I have my suspicions why they would want him on the sidelines. But dead?”

“Not just dead. Parked in a Louis Vuitton. I double-checked. They took out the hanger to make space.”

“Kim’s people, maybe. Pang’s people. That bastard Zhao. All of them could have done it. Personally, I think it was Zhao. Something this sick, it’s right up his alley.”

“Maybe. Each of them had reasons to get rid of him. Each of them had reasons to keep him around.”

“We call that motive.”

2

“Everyone was supposed to believe that no one had a reason to kill him, that anyone who thought about it needed him alive. But late at night, when everything was quiet and the branches were brushing against the windows in the wind, it occurred to someone that if he was around, there was always a chance he might turn out to be brilliant. What then? What if instead of chaos they ended up with stability? Maybe even recovery? What if he turned out to be charismatic? Even ‘capable’ could be a problem. They couldn’t risk the chance that a thirty-three-year-old might know what he was doing, might rally his forces and tell them to get out of his country.”

“So, she killed him, and they killed her.” Kang was sitting across from me in the restaurant on the second floor, except we had missed breakfast and so were picking at our lunch. “I needed him alive. Without him, we don’t have anyone to hold the flag.”

Kang had appeared that morning. There was a knock on my door at 10:00 A.M. and there he was.

“May I come in, Inspector?”

“Well, cut off my legs and call me Shorty.”

Kang gave me a puzzled look.

“I saw it in a movie a long time ago. I think it indicates surprise in the American West. Come in, absolutely. It says in the hotel rules I’m allowed to have visitors until ten P.M. Here, let me take your bag.”

Kang had a small nylon carry-on over his shoulder. “No, I’ll keep it with me.” He stepped inside and gave the room a careful once-over. “Nice place,” he said. “You think we can get some tea?”

I went to the desk and retrieved the room service menu. “It says here we can. All I have to do is dial six.” I dialed 6. “Yes, a pleasant good morning to you… Yes, I slept well… Yes, you can do something for me as a matter of fact. I would like two pots of tea.” I paused. “I see… Yes, it is after nine thirty. All right, two pots of coffee. Maybe some toast with strawberry jam as well?… Aha. I see. All right, blueberry will do fine. Thank you.” I hung up. “Ten minutes, they said. Meanwhile, make yourself comfortable. Take a shower if you want. Don’t mind the TV; they promised me the picture only goes one way.”

The coffee showed up; the toast did not. I was a little concerned about talking in the room, but Kang said not to worry.

“Not to step where I’m not wanted,” I said, “but how did you get in the country? I would have thought some sort of lookout had been issued for you.”

“They don’t even know for sure if I am still alive, Inspector. They have a collection of faded photographs and out-of-date descriptions. I could be anybody’s grandfather. I’ll bet my documerits are better than yours. It was time to come back. I’ll be out of your hair and set up in another part of town by the end of the day. Then we shall see what we shall see.”

After a little more Delphic volleyball like this, by 11:30 we were both hungry. “Let’s try the restaurant. I hear the soup is good.”

3

“Maybe he’s not dead; maybe we’re still speculating,” I said, though I only said it to make Kang feel better. It didn’t make me feel any better. The armrest on my chair was loose. Fancy restaurant, gold-trimmed mirrors, gold-trimmed tables, and the damned gold-trimmed chairs were falling apart. The table wobbled, too; it was the sort of wobble that would only get worse if they didn’t tighten the screws. I reached underneath to see if I could turn the ones on my side with the end of my spoon.

“No, I’m not speculating. I know Macau, Inspector. I used to do my banking there. It was hard not to bump into someone who would dispose of a body for the right fee. When the economy was bad, you could even get a rate for more than one body. He’s gone; I’m sure of it. But I need to know what happened. That’s the only way I can figure out where the solid ground is, and where the swamp. If we know who did it, and how, it may put us in a better position for the next move. Greta thinks you have a theory.”

“Greta. You know, if you mix up the Roman letters for her name you get ‘great.’ How is Greta, by the way?”

“Busy.” Another couple of words would have been polite, but he wasn’t handing them out. “Now, tell me your theory. Don’t worry with the political gloss. We’ll treat this like a police matter.”

“Nice try,” I said. “But you know as well as I do that these strands wrap around each other. I can’t separate the political from the criminal even in normal times-on this one, it is completely impossible.”

“What a relief, Inspector. For once, I thought, you might actually do exactly as I asked, and that would mean we had both become boring old men. All right, we’ll throw everything into the pot and see what we get.”

“He arrived in Macau on Sunday night, the ninth of October, at five o’clock, but you already knew that. There is a gap between that time and when he showed up at the Grand Lisboa Hotel. That you may not have known. He wasn’t preregistered, didn’t even have a reservation. That suggests a last-minute move, or an effort to keep his travel as far as possible under the radar. I don’t know where he was between the moment he put his feet on the soil of Macau and when he walked into the lobby. It might matter a lot, or it might not matter at all. If you ask me, it was the first time he had been out of the country in a while. Maybe he wanted to stretch his legs and gather his thoughts before the operation got underway.”

I kept myself from staring into Kang’s eyes. I knew they would tell me nothing. They would go from expressionless to dead, barren orbs in a frozen sky. It wouldn’t even help to watch his hands. I’d learned the lesson sitting across from him fifteen years ago, and I never forgot. Kang was in complete control of his every gesture; if he needed a nervous tic, he could time it to the millisecond. If I wanted a reaction, the only thing to do was wait. I’d laid down the challenge to him-that I was pretty sure what had happened in Macau wasn’t the result of an accident, that it was far worse than that, that it was a political assassination. I’d already told Greta that I suspected she had been in Macau to pass a message. Kang knew I was picking up the shards of a broken operation, but now I was challenging him directly to tell me the details, or at least a few of them.

“Maybe someone spotted him while he was walking around.” Kang’s voice was completely noncommittal. Then his cheek twitched. Astounding, I thought, right on schedule. “Maybe it was someone who wasn’t supposed to know he was there.”

“Could be.”

“That wouldn’t help if, as you say, he was involved in an operation.”

“Listen, either we play this on level ground or we finish our lunch and go our separate ways. You know exactly what the operation was. I have my suspicions. You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, but please don’t play dumb. It’s annoying. After all these years, it’s very annoying.”

Kang nodded. “Let’s put it to the side for now. Good enough?”

It wasn’t nearly good enough, but it was clear that I wasn’t going to get anything more on this from him, not yet, so there was no sense pouting. “I’ll throw some more in the pot. You tell me when to stop. He arrived at the hotel at half past six. He wanted a very specific room. He gave the front desk a list of requirements, but that was chaff. There was only one thing he really cared about: It had to have a good view of the Portuguese fort on the hill. I think I know why. I think you do, too.”

Kang made a sweeping gesture with his hand. “More for the side pile.”

“He had one suitcase with him, a Louis Vuitton Pegase 60. That’s a two-wheeler, good enough for a few days’ travel if you don’t care about wrinkling your suit. Not as good as the 70.”

“Get on with it, O.”

“He goes up to his room and locks himself in for three days. I think he was nervous. He wanted to be alone to think. Maybe he wasn’t sure he was ready for what was coming. And he was waiting for a message. That’s when he made the first mistake. He put on the DO NOT DISTURB light. He may not even have known he turned it on. The light switches in those rooms are a nightmare. They’re like the control panel in an agent submarine. But the housekeeping staff had no way of knowing whether he did it by mistake or not. All they knew was that the light was on and that meant they were supposed to stay away.”

“And they did?”

“Religiously. He waited for the message. By the second day he began to worry when it didn’t come. His stomach was in knots and he couldn’t eat. He wanted to talk to someone, anyone, but he knew he couldn’t do that because he wasn’t supposed to tell anyone at all where he was. It was too dangerous. He was alone, without friends, without protection, for the first time in his life. His only hope was the message. That would be his lifeline. But the message didn’t come.”

“Why not? It was delivered.” Kang bit off the last word. He knew he had gone too far. Or he wanted me to think he had.

“Yes, it was delivered. It showed up the first night, exactly according to plan. But the concierge held it. The DO NOT DISTURB light was on. The next morning, word came in that the message was to be ‘misplaced’ for another day or so. The concierge didn’t ask why. He just put it in the bottom drawer. Once that happened, the trap was set.”

The waiter came over to the table to see if we needed anything else. Kang waved him away.

I continued. “Almost as soon as our boy disappeared from Pyongyang, there was a frantic search. Alerts went out. He had to be found. And he was. I still don’t know how. You said it could have been that someone saw him walking around. Maybe. Or maybe you have a problem in your organization.”

“I can do without the free advice, Inspector. We’ll leave it where you put it-he was found, and we don’t yet know how. You said something about a trap.”

“Once he was found, a decision was made to make sure he never came back. It was a quick decision, almost instantaneous. It was one of those things that came out of nowhere. No one thought about it. The opportunity was too good to pass up, not merely because it was a chance to eliminate him physically, but because his reputation-and everything he stood for-could be destroyed as well.”

“Let’s not deal in ciphers, Inspector. You think you know who made this nondecision. Throw that in the mix.”

“You told me Major Kim wanted to destroy his reputation. I’ve had enough to do with Kim over the past several weeks to think he wouldn’t stop at that. And if he had second thoughts on murder-which he would-Zhao would have convinced him it could be done without danger. It was merely a question of activating certain connections, bringing to bear certain resources. Zhao knew people who were very good at what they did, and took pleasure in their work. They were on call. Yes, it was a challenge to carry this off on such short notice, but the greater the challenge, the more intense the pleasure. Have you ever seen Zhao’s eyes glow in the dark? Phone calls were made, probably to Russia. An order was placed. Money transferred. On the evening of October thirteenth, the goods showed up at Hong Kong Airport-a Korean-Russian who was unusually good with a knife.”

“Full stop, Inspector. You’re telling me Zhao put out this order? Not Kim?”

“Does it matter?”

“It might.”

“Then you’ll have to pursue it on your own. I have no way of knowing for sure. Kim is basically weak. If there hadn’t been someone to push him along, he wouldn’t have gone ahead with any of the murders on his own, not this one or the ones that followed. You want me to keep going?”

Kang nodded. “Do you have a name for this Korean-Russian killer?”

“Tanya.”

“You’re sure?”

“You asked for a name, Kang. That’s the name I came up with.”

“How? How would you know that? Did you meet this person?”

“No. But I got close.”

“How?”

“Pork buns. There was an MSS officer who kept an eye on the Russian prostitutes. He had lists of the girls, what they wore, how they worked, whether they had any clients that were on the watch alerts. Mostly, things were routine, so he ate pork buns and snoozed. Past midnight on October fourteenth, he noticed a new girl, a blonde. She didn’t dress like the others, didn’t walk like them, and only worked for a few hours before she disappeared. He never saw her again. He has an agreement with the Russian pimp who runs that group to be kept up to date on new faces. Who was the blond girl? The pimp was real nervous, said he’d only taken her on as a favor for a friend, but she was strange and he didn’t want her to scare away clients. He said her name was Tanya.”

“Tanya. I should have known.”

Kang knew Tanya? I felt like I had stepped off the continental shelf.

“After she killed him,” Kang was feeling his way here, “they killed her?”

“Yes, only it wasn’t a her. She was a he.”

“Tanya was a him?” Kang looked stunned. “You know this?”

“No, but I’m willing to bet. Someone with our boy’s appearance was on the ferry from the airport the thirteenth. He wouldn’t have gone to the airport, but the killer might have come from there. He came in as a male, maybe actually as a Korean from Russia, though the passport was probably fake. That’s getting to be depressing, all of the phony passports. Why do we bother with them?”

“Forget passports. What about the killer?”

“After he landed in Macau, he went somewhere to change. I don’t know where, but I think I know who helped him. He was on the streets for a couple of hours. After that, he showed up at the Hotel Nam Lo, trooping up and down the stairs a few times to make sure the front desk clerk didn’t miss him. Her.”

“How do you know this?”

“Someone told me, someone who had no reason to lie. They didn’t say it in so many words, because they didn’t know what they were telling me. And I didn’t know what they were telling me at the time.”

“This whole theory has a lot of supposition.”

“Life is uncertain, Kang, and theories have holes. That’s the way it is. Maybe it doesn’t seem to hang together because the plan wasn’t thought out ahead of time. As I said, the whole thing was probably put together in the hurry. They had a skill set that had to be matched with physical attribution, but basically they would take what they could get-essentially, any assassin who answered the phone and didn’t mind wearing a wig. They must have danced around the room when they came up with Tanya. They made clear that for full payment, it had to be a quick and dirty job-very dirty. They wanted a lot of blood. That had to be part of the story. Depravity piled on depravity. Yes, and when it was done, they killed him. Her.”

“Why?”

“Panic maybe, though in this case, I wouldn’t rule out bloodlust. Someone should check to see if the Macau police located the lungs.”

“Both sets?”

“Good point. There should be enough body parts for two-I wouldn’t bet on all the right parts, though. This case is so weird, I wouldn’t be surprised if the autopsy reports mention an extra set of arms.”

The waiter had moved into hearing distance. He had turned very pale. Kang waved him away, again.

“The thing that still puzzles me,” I said, “is how they got both bodies out. The tapes from the hallway security cameras showed someone leaving with two suitcases. How could he walk out pulling luggage that contained his own torso? Another thing, our boy only had one suitcase when he checked in. Where do you suppose the extra came from? I think someone supplied it afterwards. I think I know who.”

“You saw the tapes?”

“No, but I think I will-soon. What happens now?”

“A lot of uncertainty. A whole lot.” Kang drummed his fingers on the table. “A whole fucking lot.”

“I’ve been wondering, who benefits? And I’m not talking about motive exactly. Think about it. No one benefits, but everyone benefits. When you lay everything on this fancy tablecloth, it’s just the least bad of all the possible outcomes for a lot of people. I’d say that if you trim the fat, you end up with three basic possibilities.”

“Maybe.”

“First, there could be a smooth transition to new leadership. That’s what Kim keeps harping on. He’s obsessed with it. So, let’s say Kim’s people do take over, that they don’t screw up more than normal, and that no one around here cares. That’s bad for the Chinese; Pang’s ghost is unhappy and restless, but unless they want to use force, there’s nothing Beijing can do about it.”

Kang thought about it. “Unlikely.”

“Sure it’s unlikely. I didn’t say it was likely, did I? I said it was possible. The reason it won’t happen is because there are too many people who-dissatisfied or not with what they have right now-aren’t ready to bend over and take what the South Koreans are going to give them. The second possibility is more likely. It’s what we might call transition interruptus. That’s Latin. The Pope uses it.”

Kang put his hands together.

“From what I can tell and a few things I read, Pang’s people have plans to move in so quickly that no one knows what hit them. That will be very bad for Kim, bad enough for him to lose his pension. Seoul would be furious but hapless, completely paralyzed.”

“I’d say this second scenario is also unlikely.”

“So would I, because it wouldn’t take more than a week for people up here to decide that even if they’re hungry they don’t want Chinese food every night. They’ll become sullen and from there they’ll go active. It will be messy and the Chinese don’t like mess, so they will bail out as quickly as they can.”

“Give me something likely, will you?”

“Third choice, someone pops up out of nowhere. That’s actually very common and I’d say likely. A skunk colonel decides his star has risen, and that he is tired of listening to old men. Everyone connected with Kim or Pang is eliminated, either in bed or over dessert. That is also very common. Then the whole thing starts over again. In the end, it’s not the worst outcome for Pang’s people; they can live with more of the same. Zhao is terribly unhappy; too bad for him. Kim is unhappy; too bad for him. The Russian in the northeast is found dead of food poisoning-Chinese fish.”

“You figured this out on your own?”

“I had a little help.”

“There’s only one problem, Inspector. You still don’t know what you don’t know. And what you don’t know makes none of it plausible.”

“Irrational, implausible. Who cares? You’re missing the point. What am I going to do about it?”

“What are you going to do about it?” Kang moved around some silverware. “Excuse me, I thought this was about history and the future of tens of millions of people. But no, obviously, it is not. It is about you.”

“I didn’t mean it that way. You know what I meant.”

“No, actually, I don’t know what you meant. I’m beginning to think I made a mistake by getting you involved.” He picked up the spoon and the knife and moved them off to one side together. “When we first met years ago, Inspector, I said I’d been watching you for a long time.”

“We were on the phone. I remember because the operator was playing games with me. You suggested we meet at the Koryo Hotel.”

Kang applauded softly. “Very good, Inspector. What else do you remember?”

“Everyone was watching me in those days, it seemed. People in my sector used to say they always knew when I was around. Streets became busy; sidewalks filled with surveillance teams jostling each other. Sometimes I would turn around and the whole line would trip over itself trying to duck into doorways.”

“Only I wasn’t in that line. Keeping track of where you went or who you saw didn’t interest me. I needed to find out who you became, to watch for signs that the seeds your grandfather planted took root. It was partially his idea.”

There was no sound; it happened silently, in an instant. The past shattered and was gone.

“I didn’t know your grandfather very well. We only met a few times. He told me you had potential, but that it would be slow to show up. Like one of the old gingko trees on the temple grounds, he said.”

I heard Kang, I knew he was telling the truth, but I wasn’t at the table with him. I was above it, hovering, watching autumn’s cruelest trick-the emptiness at the end of time. This was the betrayal. This was the lie, the only lie that could have torn my self from my being, and I never imagined it. I never saw it coming.

“No,” I heard my voice. “I’ll bet what he said was, ‘You’ve got to look at a tree, listen to it, see how it grew, before you know how to use the wood.’ I know how his mind worked. And now?” I was back in the chair. I made sure to sound calm. The core of my existence was suddenly gone, but I could be calm. At least I could preserve that much dignity. “Do you think the time has come to harvest the lumber? What should I become? A writing desk, on which you can sign orders for executions?”

Kang kept his eyes on me. They were lazy, his body slack, still the bear watching the rabbit.

“Or no, not a desk. That’s too obvious. I know! Let’s make me into a table on which to spread the victory meal. Oak is fine for that, better than gingko. Did my grandfather tell you I was to be an oak plank?” I laughed, and that was my mistake. The laughter split the calm in two, and out of the breach slipped a murderous anger I thought I had given up a long time ago. My entire existence nothing but the whim of an old man who had lost his son? Raised for what? No better than my brother mindlessly following sacred political texts, worse than him for believing I was different. Trained, shaped, pruned-why? To be an instrument of what hand, to hold what weapon, to slay what hope in the name of what myth? “Elm! That’s it! I should have known. Elm might split if used too soon. It has to be seasoned.” I held up a hand, my right hand, the one I used to sand the wooden cars and boats smooth to the touch. The hand was old, veined, bent; surely it was not mine. “Tell me, was that part of the plan as well, to wait until I was seasoned?” I picked up a knife from the table and sliced my flesh. “A miter cut is what he always suggested. Makes a strong joint, he would say.” The knife was very dull. I sliced my arm again.

“O!” Kang leaped from the chair and grabbed for the knife.

I jerked it away from him. A little blood came down my arm, not much. “Trees are passive. But I am not. Trees are forgiving. But I am not, not anymore. Do you think I don’t realize what this means?” I laughed again. Another mistake. More anger poured through, it widened the breach. “Let me tell you a story.”

“Not right now.” Kang looked at my arm. “We have other things to worry about.”

“Wrong again. Again and again and again.” I began shaking, shouting, bellowing like an ox, blood boiling, heat burning away shields built during nights of terrible fear. “This is a story of betrayal. It is vast, Kang, and so very complicated.” I knew what I had to say. I didn’t know all the words, but I knew where they would lead.

Kang spoke calmly, as if nothing had happened. “Always complicated, these stories. It wouldn’t be betrayal otherwise.”

“You!” I was practically screaming in his face. I couldn’t think of anything else to say to that. “You!” The other customers looked away. The waiter folded and unfolded napkins. The cook came out of the kitchen and stared.

“On second thought, perhaps it would be better if you proceed, Inspector.” Kang sat down, though he stayed poised to jump up again if I reached for the knife. “Why don’t you make yourself comfortable? A long story is best told…” He paused. “Never mind; however you wish. Tell it however you wish. Sit, don’t sit, trot around the room like a wounded unicorn if it will do any good.”

I began. The other customers put down their silverware to listen. The words flowed out.

“There was once a king who cried when he was happy and who smiled when he was mad. He had his subjects whipped when he was pleased with them. He soothed them and treated them with huge banquets when he was angry. At first, there was confusion in the kingdom. People were not sure of themselves. They stumbled through the months, never clear on how to approach the throne, or whether to approach it at all. At the end of a year, they understood. As more time passed, it became inconvenient to deal one way with the king and another way among themselves. They adapted. Children learned to cry when they were happy, to jump with joy when their parents screamed at them with rage, because rage was approval and all children seek that. When lovers sat cooing at each other in the park, passersby knew they were furious and hurried on. If the king nodded in agreement at your petition, the next day you were led to the execution grounds, where the condemned laughed and their relatives told jokes. The other countries did not know how to deal with such an upside-down place. Wise men were consulted. Diplomats went through special training before being assigned to the court, lest they smile when they should frown and cause a war.

“The king finally died. People stood on the street corners and cheered when his coffin went by, pulled by a long line of white horses decked with ribbons and bright bouquets. The prince did handsprings at the funeral and ordered the royal musicians to play only quick marches for the whole period of mourning, which according to tradition was to last for three years, and thus went on for six.

“Foreigners who observed this did not know what to make of it. You see, they said knowingly to each other, it was inevitable. All the time the people were pretending to be happy when they were actually sad.”

Kang said nothing for a moment. The other diners resumed their meals. The cook returned to the kitchen. “You should write it down,” Kang said finally. All at once, he looked alarmed. “Are you all right?”

4

Kang stood over me, a question mark spinning above his head.

“What the hell?” I said. I was on the floor. From there, I could see the legs on all the tables. Rarely do you see so many table legs from that perspective. They were all imperfect. No wonder the tables wobbled.

“You passed out, Inspector. I don’t think this is good. I think you need to see someone.”

“Help me up.” I was too weak to lift my hand, or maybe it was no longer connected. It was someone else’s hand. Had we been introduced, this old hand and me? “What wills me to come back, do you think?” I said after Kang pulled me to my feet and put me in the chair with the loose armrest. “What is this awful fascination I have with light and air? I could have stayed where I was, but for some reason I’m back. Weeds do that.”

“A curse, I know, Inspector. An affliction.” He was taking my pulse, nodding his head to keep count.

“For a moment, you know, I really wasn’t here. Maybe longer. I could have closed the door behind me. I should have.”

“No, you weren’t gone. You were hovering. That’s what we all do in autumn, isn’t it?” He let my arm drop. “Whatever it was, you’re back among us, and your color is getting better. It couldn’t get any worse than it was. Did you finish the story?”

“What story?”

“It was about betrayal, but rather complex.”

“Ah, betrayal. Oak, perhaps.” My head was still clearing.

“You are the one who knows his way around a forest, Inspector, not me.”

“And you are the one who knows his way around betrayals. Can I have a glass of water? Tell me, these days what makes you think you aren’t in the betrayed column? After what happened in Macau, you could be next.”

He produced a glass half-filled. “Ask me again tomorrow. I woke up this morning; that told me I’d make it through today. If I wake up tomorrow as well, I’ll figure the same. It doesn’t worry me, though, which way it swings. You have your door. I have mine. I always have.”

“This armrest is driving me crazy. These chairs were made in China; I can tell. They think they can run this country? Don’t make me laugh.”

“Relax, Inspector; don’t get excited. You might disappear again otherwise.”

“You disappeared, Kang, and not for a couple of minutes. Why did you come back? Why do you care what goes on here? Don’t tell me you’re suddenly a patriot. You’re not a believer. And you’re not here on your own; that’s what I think. Who is paying you?”

“I didn’t leave because I wanted to, you may recall. It wasn’t my choice to stay away so long.”

“It never struck me that you were someone who was too particular about borders, or about your paymaster. Major Kim told me-”

Kang looked away. “Nothing Kim says matters.” He said this softly, like he had turned out the lights in a room he never wanted to see again.

“You know him pretty well, I take it.”

I waited, but nothing came back. The question simply dissolved in the space between us. “Let me guess. You had a joint operation, but it didn’t go well. And now you’re working against him.”

“I’ll say this only once. Never believe anything he tells you. Nothing. Ever.”

“My grandfather was suspicious of oak trees. He said that they were too complex to be trusted.” I thought about it. “And me? You believe anything I say? I’m not all that complex, really. You’ve been watching me; you should know that much.”

“For the moment, I believe whatever it is that keeps me alive. That should be your credo, too.”

“I don’t need it. I’ll find something else. Maybe something halfway in between.”

“A piece of advice, Inspector-stay out of the middle. In times like this, it is the middle that gets crushed. When this is finally over, the countryside will be littered with the corpses of people who chose too late.”

“You’re about to give me a choice, is that it? Don’t bother. I don’t join and I don’t jump. I don’t know if that’s my fate or my upbringing. If you have doubts about me, don’t. I’m not with Kim, and I’m not scared of him.”

“Here.” Kang handed me a napkin to put against the cut. “Take this in case you finally decide it’s worth getting out of the middle.” He stood up to go. “No sense bleeding to death right now.”

5

“Let’s suppose the Chinese moved in. Would that be so bad? It wouldn’t be the end of the world. You don’t want the Chinese here in large numbers, of course, or with their ponderous influence.”

“I don’t want them in any numbers, and neither do you.” Kang had helped me back to my hotel room. He was leaning against pressed wood.

“You also don’t want the South to take over.”

“Why should we? We’ll be treated like dirt for a generation. Look how long it took them to stop sneering at Cholla people.”

“Then what’s left?”

“We’ve been on our own for a long time. We can do better. We’re not completely stupid after all these years.” Kang had started down one road of thought, but I could see he changed his mind at the last minute. “You realize, Inspector, that this can’t have a happy ending. There is no clean solution. It’s over the edge of the cliff already.”

“Pity.” He must know about Li.

“I mean, especially for you. It can only end badly.”

“Compared to what?” I said. “If you’re trying to scare me into jumping in line behind you, forget it. I told you: I don’t jump; I don’t join. That’s probably why I survived on the mountain. The more I think about it, the more I realize I was lucky to be there.”

“The problem is, you might not be lucky forever. Life is a series of remembered tasks. What if you forget to inhale one day?”

“Don’t worry; I plan it out every morning when I wake up. So many breaths. So many heartbeats. So many trips to the bathroom. It’s too hard to dole out laughter daily, so I put it on a monthly ration. By the end of the month, people find me dour.”

Kang had a pistol in his belt. He put it on the desk. “What about surprise? What’s the quota for fear this month? Pain?”

“Overfulfilled. I’ve already borrowed against next month. I told you, if you’re trying to scare me, forget it.”

Kang moved to the window and looked outside. “This hotel. You like it?”

“It’s all right. You said so yourself.”

“I’d say you might want to consider moving to a new room. Even better, move out altogether; find a quieter place, something with a better character, maybe. It’s up to you, but that’s what I say.” He looked at the pistol, then at me. “You have something to protect yourself with in these troubled times?”

“My aura of invincibility.”

“Useful, but carry this when you go out from now on.” He took an extra clip out of his pocket. “If you use these up and need more, it means you’re out of luck, so don’t bother looking around for the exit door. Keep one for yourself. I’ll be in touch.” He stepped into the hall and, from the sound of another door slamming shut, took the stairs.

I didn’t have a suitcase, but I also didn’t have much in the way of clothes, so I put everything in the laundry bag. There was no sense checking out, since Kim, or at least his accounting department, was paying the bill. Downstairs, the bird clerk looked up as I walked by.

“It’s no problem for us to do the laundry,” she said. “Just dial six.”

“I thought six was room service.”

She held up one finger.

“Never mind. I prefer to do the laundry myself. Go down to the river and beat it on the rocks, that’s how we washed our things in the old days.”

“There are no rocks.”

“No? That’s progress. Every damn river in the country is filled with rocks except this one.” I smiled at her. She wasn’t bad looking when you saw her in the afternoon light. “Say, don’t I know you from up in Rajin? Didn’t you used to sing at the casino?”

“Me? I’ve never been up there.” She seemed pleased.

I hoisted the bag over my shoulder. “I’ve always done my own laundry.”

“You kidding me?”

“Sure, it’s how we did things. My grandfather, who you probably never heard of, said he hadn’t spent all that time in the forest fighting Japs just to make sure someone else would wash his shorts.”

“He said that? What about your mother?”

“She died in the war.”

“Oh.” The clerk looked serious. “You shouldn’t call them Japs.”

“Pardon me?”

“Japs. You shouldn’t say that. We get Japanese tourists these days, older ones, not many, but more and more. They like to come and look around at places they used to live, where they went to school, that sort of thing. We’re not supposed to offend them.”

A car, two cars roared into the parking lot. A lot of doors slammed all at once.

“You’d better get back here.” The clerk opened a door behind the counter. I moved quickly to see what she meant. There was a small space and what looked like a passageway, though it was too dark to see where it led. “Do it!” she hissed. “Now!”

I disappeared inside, and the door shut behind me.

“You can’t go up there,” I heard the clerk say.

“The hell we can’t.” A clatter of footsteps up the stairs. A few minutes later, footsteps coming down, not nearly as fast. “Where is he?” It was Major Kim’s voice. He was out of breath.

“I don’t know. He left a few minutes ago.”

“Where’d he go?”

“Out.”

“What out? Where did he go?”

“How should I know? You don’t pay us to put tracking devices in their undershirts.”

There was a slap and a yelp. “You were supposed to keep him here.”

“Yeah.” This time it was the thin man. “You were supposed to keep him here.”

“He didn’t take well to stalling tactics, all right? He left. He said he was going to do his laundry down by the riverside. That’s what I know. You hit me again and I’ll report you.”

Another slap, another yelp. From the sound of his voice, Kim had moved around the counter and was standing right outside the little door. “You people had better get it straight who’s in charge from now on. What happened to these TV monitors? You’re supposed to be taping everyone who comes in here.”

“They’re not on.”

“I can see that. When did they go off?”

“Yesterday, day before, who knows? I’m not a technician. We put in a request for maintenance, but they’re sealed, so someone special has to open them. He hasn’t shown up. Hey! Let go of me.”

“You screw with me once more, you’ll end up in a camp, you understand? And they aren’t nice, those guards. Get these monitors fixed. Everything else better be working, too. I’ll be back to check. And you,” I was guessing he had pointed a finger at the thin man, “you go down to the river and pick him up. If he gets out of your sight again, you’re going to be trading recipes with the crabs at the bottom of the West Sea.”

The car engines started up, and tires screamed out of the parking lot. A minute later, the clerk opened the little door and looked in. “You heard that?”

I came out and straightened up. “I heard.”

“One of these days, I’m going to put a bullet in his skull.”

“Good for you. Since when are we friends?”

“Beats me. I only do what I’m told.”

“By whom?”

“Someone better than him.” She rubbed her cheek.

“If you don’t mind my asking, what’s the handy little closet under there?”

“It leads into the main monitoring panels for the audio and video surveillance in all the room-phones, lamps, phony sprinkler heads.”

“TVs in the bathroom,” I said.

She shrugged. “Most of the time, whole floors in a hotel are devoted to monitors and transcribers and so forth, but these owners didn’t want to sacrifice profits. They must have had a lot of clout, because Security ended up with everything crammed into a room at the end of that tunnel.”

“Thanks.”

“You need another place to stay. Don’t leave me a forwarding address; I don’t want to know. If I were you, I wouldn’t leave by the front door.”

“Where?”

“There’s a back exit.” She fiddled with a dial on one of the monitors and a picture appeared. “Nobody around. They’d be in plain sight if they were back there.”

“I thought the monitors weren’t working.”

She twirled the dial again and the picture disappeared. “They’re not.”

6

The back door of the hotel opened onto a narrow street that snaked past a school and a collection of buildings that were under major repair. I wanted to get to the SSD offices, not the headquarters but a nondescript compound behind a sagging brick wall where the technical offices were located. Security was not as tight there as it was at the main building. I knew that because when I was still working at the Ministry I occasionally had gone to the compound on business. Assuming the compound was still there. Assuming the procedures hadn’t changed in five years. One thing, I knew, was working in my favor-bureaucratic time. Mountains might crumble, but regulations were for the ages. Five years was nothing for a bureaucracy. It wasn’t even worth opening a file.

As I emerged onto a main street, I heard a car slam on its brakes and watched in amazement as a blue Nissan with right-hand drive shot across six lanes up onto the sidewalk in front of me.

“Get in.” It was the thin man, and he was breathing heavily. “We thought you were at the river doing laundry.”

“I was, but I had to go back for some bleach. You don’t mind giving me a lift? Where’d you get this car?”

“We had a deal. You broke it. I’m going to bust your legs so you can’t do that again.”

“No, you’re not. You’re going to take me to SSD Compound Three. They just phoned about some photographs. Step on it.”

7

The guard at the front gate held up his hand and frowned.

“I told you we’d never get in. My plates are the wrong ones for this compound. Now I’ll have to argue with this moron.” The thin man started to open his door.

“Wait; don’t get out. Stay in the car. He’s not used to looking in a right-hand window at a driver. If you get out, you give the guard the advantage.”

“I do?”

“Make him come over here. Growl at him.” I gave it some thought. “Give him one of your stares.”

The guard frowned again and looked more closely at the license plate.

“Don’t worry,” I muttered between clenched teeth. “He’s getting nervous. He’ll come over to your side any minute and ask for ID. Tell him to get lost.”

“What? He’ll call in his commander, and they’ll take me away in chains.”

“They don’t have chains. All they have is those nose rings. Just say we need to see H4. See if that does any good.”

The thin man put his hand to his nose as the guard walked over.

“ID.” Every guard since time began sounded angry when he said that. It wasn’t anything personal.

I wasn’t too worried, but the thin man looked rattled. “I’m here with a headquarters visitor. He has official business with H4.”

The guard took a step back and saluted. “Next time, get a fucking blue pass for the windshield.”

I smiled as we drove in. “See, that wasn’t so difficult. Park over on the side. That’s where I used to put my car. Someone will come out of the building to complain, but if you lock the doors, there isn’t anything they can do. Move as if you’ve been here a hundred times before.”

“Say, you know your way around. I’m impressed.”

“Do whatever I tell you. Once we get into the photography section, you sit in the waiting room. They have collections of real good pictures, if you know what I mean.”

The offices of H4-“Silver Mountain Tractor Parts” as it was known to outsiders-were on the second floor. That was where SSD doctored photographs for use in operations. It was also where photographs were checked to make sure someone else hadn’t monkeyed with them. The people in H4 were very good at what they did. If they said they needed a new, state-of-the-art machine to keep up with the opposition, they got a new machine.

The door to the second floor from the stairway was locked. “This one is compliments of me,” the thin man said. He took out a leather pouch with several small tools in it, selected one, and opened the door. “We’re even.”

“Even,” I said. “There’s the waiting room. Go in there and look important. I’ll be out in a few minutes.”

The third door down the hall was open. The desks hadn’t changed; nothing had changed, not even the rounded shoulders of the man sitting with his back to the door, peering through a microscope.

I knocked softly. “Can anyone come in?”

The man swiveled around in his chair. “Long time, Inspector.” He stood up. “Who let you through the front gate?”

“Nice way to greet an old friend. Have a minute?”

“Sure. That’s probably how long we’ll have before the guards come up and drag you away.”

“Not to worry. I’m here with someone from SSD headquarters.”

“That so? I suppose they’re in the toilet powdering their nose.”

“Actually, they’re in the waiting room.”

“You don’t mind if I look? The last time you and I did business, they lifted my file for investigation and my rations were suspended for two months because you weren’t properly escorted.” He walked down the hall. In a minute, he was back. “OK, your escort is swooning over the photographs. We can talk. What can I do for you?”

“A little background.”

“As in information? That I can’t do. Pictures we can discuss. Information is something else. You know that.”

“All right, pictures. If I wanted to modify pictures from a hotel security camera, what would I have to do?”

“Depends on the camera. If it’s an old one that takes photos every few seconds, it doesn’t much matter. The photos are crap and the time between the frames makes it nearly impossible to get a believable continuity. We don’t touch them anymore. There are only a few hotels in the city that haven’t changed over to the new technology yet.”

“What about hotels overseas?”

“We don’t have access.”

“Nowhere?”

He scratched his head. “Mostly nowhere.”

“How about Macau?”

“MSS doesn’t like us fooling with their stuff.”

“But you do.”

“I don’t pay attention to what’s on the film or where it’s from. The job description comes in on the orders, I push a few buttons on the machine, zip, zap, a new reality is born.”

“If I was in a new five-star hotel in Macau and I wanted to evade the hallway security cameras, could I do it?”

“Sure. All you’d have to do is call the control room and tell them to turn off such and such a station.”

“But that would leave a gap, a blank spot. Everyone would know.”

“An empty inside corridor is an empty inside corridor. It looks the same all the time. No problem with changes in shadows. Once in a while a maid walks by. If you don’t really care, you just put in a stock scene. No one can tell with the new digital stuff. They say they can, but they can’t. If you are going up against someone who is more careful, double-checks the schedule of the help and that sort of thing, then you have to be more careful, too. That takes some coordination with the locals. But it can be done.”

“Zip. Zap. Coordination?”

“You know, a local service. Friends in the right places.”

“Gangsters?”

“You’re asking for information, O. No information about gangsters asking for film to be altered from Macau. I can’t share that sort of thing with someone like you, no matter how many times you ask. Nothing about suitcases, either. Now, get out of here, and take your friend with you. You’d better wipe his chin; I think he’s drooling all over his shirt.”

A small word of appreciation was on my lips when a huge explosion rattled the building and knocked us both off our feet.

“What the fuck?” My friend picked himself from the floor. “It will take weeks to recalibrate everything after that. This is delicate equipment.” An alarm began to sound in the hall. “That’s it; you’d better get out of here before they start shooting first and then forget what the questions were.”

8

By the time the thin man and I got downstairs to the car, there was full-blown panic in the compound. The guard who had admitted us was lying on the ground, his face bleeding from flying glass. Another guard had his pistol out and was pointing it at pedestrians who were running past, shouting and crying.

No one looked twice when the thin man’s car made a tight turn and flew out the front gate.

“Some photographs!” The thin man shook his head in admiration. “I’m going to get myself transferred.”

“Did you hear the explosion, or were you too busy turning pages?”

“I heard it.” He pointed at a cloud of smoke billowing over the city. “Must have been an awful jolt over there.”

“Isn’t that where my hotel is?”

There wasn’t much left. One side of the building had been sheared away, and the roof was in danger of caving in at any moment. I spotted Kang in a crowd of people pushing against a police cordon that had been thrown up in front of the parking lot. No one had any training for this sort of thing, and all the cops looked nervous. The officer in charge was running up and down the line bellowing at his men to keep everyone back.

“I’ll get out here,” I said to the thin man.

“Oh, no. I’m not letting you out of my sight again.”

“I’ll be right there.” I pointed to the crowd. “There’s no way I’m going back up to my room, and I can’t go anywhere else until I have another place to stay, can I?”

“I’ll park. If when I get back you’re gone, I’m putting you on a shoot-on-sight list.”

“Since when is there such a thing?”

“Since right now. If you think I don’t have the authority to do it, try me.”

“You spit, I’ll raise my hand.”

I jumped out of the car and hurried over to Kang. “This is your doing. That’s why you told me to get another room.”

Kang seemed unperturbed. “No. We were going to cause some damage, scare the fish in that ugly rug, but not blow the whole damned place up. Half the staff was killed. Someone else did this. I wouldn’t put it past Kim to have set the bomb so he could blame us.”

“Kim might do something like that. I’ll tell you for sure who would-Zhao.”

9

Kang had given me directions to Zhao’s apartment house. “We want him as much as you do,” Kang said, “but you’ve got a funny look in your eyes. I’ll give you a ten-minute head start. If he’s in the open-which I doubt-do whatever you want. If he’s in his hole, don’t try anything heroic. Or stupid. And don’t forget, we’re right behind you.”

The explosion had pulled all of the official security off almost every building in town, including Zhao’s. The viper was asleep, curled up on a sunny chair in the lobby. That’s good, I thought. Bombs don’t impress snakes.

The woman at the front desk started to say something, but I pointed to the viper and put a finger to my lips. “Shhhh. He spits poison if he wakes up all at once,” I whispered. “I’m supposed to tell Mr. Zhao what that big noise was all about.”

She pointed upstairs.

The apartment wasn’t on the top floor; it was the top floor. There was no hallway. The elevator doors opened silently and directly into a library filled with books from floor to ceiling.

I meant to say, “Get up, you bastard,” but when I saw the library all that came out was, “You read?”

Zhao was in a chair-red leather. “Sometimes, when there’s nothing else.” He didn’t seem surprised to see me. “I don’t like books, though. You know why?”

It didn’t seem to me that this was the exchange I should have with Zhao just before shooting him between the eyes.

“I’ll tell you why.” Zhao turned off the small reading lamp beside him. That plunged the room into darkness. “A book is what? Lots of words, but only one word at a time. You read a word; then you read the next word.”

“You’ve got that part down pretty well.” I pulled the pistol out of my belt and eased myself back a few steps.

“Same with people talking-one word at a time. Only there you can watch their faces.” He looked at me closely. I don’t know how I knew he was looking at me, but it felt obvious. “You can see what their hands are doing, or their eyes. Eyes are a giveaway. Whenever one of my guys has screwed up bad and is trying to convince me not to drop him off a boat, there are a lot of words of regret, but it’s his eyes that tell me if he really means it. It’s so much better than any written confession. I always tell people, ‘Listen to their lips, but watch their eyes.’ ”

“One of those snappy four-character sayings, right?” ’

“You think I’m joking? Try listening to a symphony sometime. You can’t do anything like that with a book, not even close. The same goes for a painting. Sure, it gets done one brushstroke at a time, that’s how it’s painted, but I’m talking about the effect. You stand back, what do you see? Brushstrokes? No, you see a painting. You follow?”

“I got your point.”

“No, you didn’t. You think I’m spouting theory.” Zhao’s eyes followed me as I edged along the wall. “But this is reality we’re talking about. Books aren’t real; that’s what I’m telling you. Words are never real. If I say, ‘I shot you,’ what the fuck do you care? But if I put a bullet in your heart, that’s real. Am I right?”

“I suppose.” Standing still might help. Maybe he couldn’t really see me but tracked movement like a bat or a shark.

“You better suppose. A bullet in your heart-that’s an image. Words aren’t even that. Words are words. And books are what? Words. I’ll say it again. You can’t get faster, or slower, or louder, or softer. Here’s a word. Here’s another word. It’s like throwing fish to a seal.”

10

The elevator door must have opened. I couldn’t hear it, but there was something new-a change in air pressure, or maybe the faint whip of a viper’s tongue. I pressed myself so far against the wall that the paint squeaked.

“Breathe normally,” Zhao laughed. It wasn’t the sound of anything this side of hell. “Just relax and close your eyes.”

No, I wasn’t going to do that. Kim said I couldn’t stop the flow of history. Maybe not, but I could make sure Zhao wouldn’t be part of it.

“Inspector? It won’t be long now. Give Pang my regards when you see him.”

A light went on, a bright orange light that made the whole room look like the middle of a burning city. I turned my head and there, standing a meter away, was Zhao’s number three, the pupils of his orange eyes as big as saucers. He was holding a saw, not for wood but for cutting through bone. His mouth opened. I fired twice. Then there was a third shot, a fourth. The viper wasn’t moving, I had my finger off the trigger, but there was still one more shot, very loud considering it was a room full of books. If Zhao was trying to shoot me in the back, he was taking his sweet time about it.

The room became supremely still for a moment. I turned around, and there was Zhao. He was sitting back in his leather chair, only I wouldn’t say it was a fighting posture or even one to show how relaxed he was. His eyes were open, but he wasn’t seeing any words. He wasn’t seeing anything. Greta stood off to his right, a pistol at her side.

“That’s done,” she said. “You all right?”

“Me? I’m fine. Did Zhao even know you were there?”

“I doubt it. Did you?” She walked over to the elevator. “Let’s get out of here.” She tossed me a book of matches. “You want to burn down the building?”

The thought never crossed my mind. “No, I think we’ll call things even at this point. Are we leaving the bodies here like this?”

“Let Major Kim deal with it.”

When we got down to the lobby, the lady at the desk was skimming a magazine. She flipped the pages as we walked by. Out on the street, Greta looked up at the top floor. “That orange light is still on. I hope it fries his eyes out.” She turned to me. “You hungry? We can get some mandu now. I’ll call Kang from the restaurant.”

11

“One thing I don’t understand.” A plate of dumplings sat in front of me, barely touched. I had discovered that near-death experiences did not whet my appetite. Greta didn’t seem to have that problem. “I know why the young man wanted that room-so he could see the fort. And I know someone standing along the front of the fort could see his room. But for what?”

She took a small light from her pocket. “It’s got a powerful beam, very concentrated.” She clicked it on once, twice, three times. “That’s it. Three times. That was all he needed to be sure that we were waiting for him. All he had to do was click his light once to show me he was there. I waited in the fort every night, but there was nothing.”

“Why was the message so crucial? Why didn’t you arrange for him to go to the window and send his signal when he arrived?”

“We didn’t know for sure we’d make it on the first day. And we had to make sure that someone else didn’t see the light and report it to the police. The message was from a song we used to sing when he was a child. He and I were cousins.”

Something creaked in my memory, a rusty hinge too old to repair. What had Luís told me? Maybe the young man had been standing at the window to signal a long-lost relative. Luís actually had said that. And I had dismissed it as Macanese sarcasm. What did I know about Macanese sarcasm?

Greta looked at the mandu on my plate. “Are you going to eat that?”

“I liked it better when we were having pastry. Go on.” I pushed the dish to her side of the table. “You were telling me about the family ties.”

“I was with him a lot when he was growing up. Later, I went away to school in Europe and decided not to come home.”

“That’s where you met Kang.”

“He said I was about the same age his daughter was when they took her away. You were there that night, Inspector. You saw what happened.”

“I only saw the aftermath, the furniture wrecked, the flowers she put on the tables scattered across the floor.” I didn’t mention the book in French, facedown as if she’d placed it carefully on the counter when they crashed through the door. “One thing I still can’t figure out. Why did he invite Tanya to his room?”

“Maybe he didn’t. Maybe Tanya just knocked on his door. I think the whole story about him inviting a prostitute to his room, having dinner, the whole thing is a lie, part of the effort to destroy his image.”

“There are receipts in his handwriting for the room service charge.”

“There are a hundred ways to forge a receipt. Zhao probably owned a string of print shops that turned out phony receipts. No one pays attention when signing those things anyway. The signatures all look like four-year-olds did them. They’re easy to forge.”

“You don’t think we know what happened that night. Neither do I.”

She helped herself to one of my mandu.

“I don’t think we’ll ever know.”

12

“Everything is coming apart at the same time, Kang, all at once. It’s exactly like the hotel. Boom! And anything left standing is only there by inertia.”

“That’s how it might look to some people.”

“You don’t think so?”

“Things appear; then they disappear. That’s how the universe does its business, Inspector. Evolutionary change is a nice idea, but it isn’t the way the world works itself into a new order. I wouldn’t let it upset me. That’s why people age; they worry about things they have no control over.”

“I take it you think you have a place in the new order.”

“No, I don’t know. Unless what we’re talking about is chaos. For that, we both have a reserved seat.”

“You expect Kim to stay and fight?”

“He and his friends will fry all of us if we let them. So, we don’t let them.”

“You really think you’re going to defeat the whole South Korean army? They’ll pour across the border. We’ll be up to our necks in troops and bureaucrats and religious zealots and helping hands.”

“We have ways.”

“When you left, did you think you’d be back?”

“I left behind what existed then. But this is now, and we’re going to shape what comes next.”

“That’s what people always think. That’s what they thought the last time. That’s what they’ll think the next time.”

“It’s a wheel; it goes around.”

“You’re going to ask me to join?”

“No. It was considered but rejected.”