The Man with the Baltic Stare

Two days later, the captain and I stood about a meter apart, not far from the border with China. After I finished reading the file, Major Kim had made clear that he wanted me to drive to the border to see exactly where the problem was centered. The file mainly focused on Chinese plans to move into the North to stop a collapse. There were wild rumors that Chinese were already flooding into the country, though no one could ever seem to spot them.

“I don’t know what’s sparking these stories or who is helping to spread them, but they have to be stopped,” Kim said. His people in the South were alarmed, and they were making his life a nightmare. He was doing his best to keep them calm, he told me. For the time being, that was possible by playing down the more alarmist of the reports, but it wouldn’t work forever. He needed someone to go up there and look around. He didn’t trust his own people on such a mission, because he didn’t know which ones were really loyal to him and which were reporting to his many detractors in Seoul. He wasn’t overjoyed to have to use me, he said, but I’d been highly recommended and he didn’t have time to search for alternatives. “Your pedigree is considered impeccable, you were never in a responsible position, and you’ve been thrown out of Pyongyang. All that looks good on a bio sheet. Remember, one thing you don’t want to do is double-cross me,” he said. “But I think you already know that.”

The captain came along because Kim didn’t trust me, and I was there because Kim didn’t trust the captain. It was simple. The captain said he wasn’t supposed to let me drive, but would I mind because he had a bad headache from drinking too much the night before. So I drove, and he tried to sleep. We went through the mountains near Hyangsan, where the maples looked like a forest fire burning on the hillsides. I went off the main road to avoid a couple of ugly towns, then sped through Huichon to Kopun, where my grandfather and I sometimes went shortly after the war for wood from a special stand of oaks.

Past Kopun, the valleys had a few farms with goats on the hills and fruit trees along the road but nowhere really to stop, so I drove until I found a pavilion on a mountain thick with pine trees, overlooking a river. Not far from the pavilion was a glade of Erman’s birch, beautiful trees, almost twenty meters tall and at peace in the afternoon sun. I sat underneath them and closed my eyes until a couple of old women showed up, pushing bicycles loaded with apples.

“What are you going to do with those, Grandma?” The captain seemed better; he was picking his teeth with a silver toothpick.

“What do you think I’m going to do with them?” The first woman put her bike against a tree. “What does anyone do with fruit? Where are you from, anyway?”

“Never mind him,” I said. “How about giving us a couple of those apples. It will lighten your load.”

“I don’t want the load lightened. As soon as we get to the top of this hill, I’ll need the extra weight to keep me from going too fast down the other side, won’t I? Unless you want to buy more than two. I’m not against sharing, you understand, but a person’s got to make a living. And that’s not easy these days.”

“More complaints,” the captain said. “Nothing but complaints from you people.” There it was again. Even the captain was afflicted with Kim’s compulsion to mark the territory, to draw a thick line between the “you” and the “us.”

“Do you want the apples or don’t you?” The old lady shifted the load on the seat of the bike. “I haven’t got all day. The Chinese only buy in the afternoon, and I’m already late for the market.”

The captain sat up. “What Chinese?”

“What Chinese? They’re strutting all over the place.”

“You’ve seen them?” The captain had a notepad out and was searching for a pen.

The old lady shook her head. “If you don’t want the apples, why don’t you just say so?” As she pushed the bike onto the road, she turned to her companion, sitting on her heels a few meters away, watching closely. “I was right,” she said. “Wasn’t I right? As soon as we spotted them I said they were a couple of deadbeats from Pyongyang.”

“Time to go.” The captain took one last look around. “How long until we get there? I don’t want to be roaming around at dusk. It’s hard to see Chinese in that light. Step on it, will you?”

It took another five hours, going up mountains, down mountains, around mountains. The captain dozed; each time he woke with a start. “Where are we? Did we cross into China?”

“What makes you think that?”

“More trees, and then more trees. Where did they come from? I thought you didn’t have any left.”

“Got to get up early to fool your people,” I said. “I called ahead and told the farms to mobilize everyone to plant these big trees in a hurry. But you spotted it right away.”

“Let me offer a suggestion,” said the captain. “It would save a lot of time if you people would build a few bridges over these valleys. A nice, straight highway would probably cut an hour, maybe two, off the drive. You might build some tunnels, too, while you’re at it. We could send some of our engineers up to show you how to do it.”

“Captain, tunnels are one thing we know how to build.”

“Then why don’t they do something about these roads?”

“Nothing wrong with these roads,” I said. “They’re scenic. Why don’t you look at the scenery?”

He looked and I drove as fast as I dared as we descended from the mountains down to Chosan, toward the shores of a lake formed by a dam on the Amnok River. We arrived before dusk, but not a lot before. I suggested we wait until morning to look around, but the captain seemed in a hurry.

“Let’s go out there now, get it over with,” he said. “There’s plenty of light left, and I don’t want to hang around.”

2

“This is nothing like the descriptions in those reports in the file. I wonder if they were talking about another location.”

“If I were you,” the captain had a pair of small binoculars to his eyes and was scanning the horizon, “I wouldn’t mention that file anymore. Forget you saw it.”

“What file?”

“That’s more like it.”

“Still, it’s peaceful. I don’t know what it is about the countryside in the fall, but it has a lulling effect on everything. If there was anything to worry about earlier in the year, you’ve forgotten what it was by October. You know, this area was separatist a long time ago. It pulled away from one of the old kingdoms and wouldn’t come back. Maybe that’s why we’re up here, to see if that sort of thing has stayed in the gene pool. Stubbornness is a dominant gene, I think. You only need one.”

The captain put the binoculars in his pocket. “Stop musing, Inspector. It’s going to get one of us killed.”

“Not likely,” I said. I turned my attention to a line of lindens that defined the route of a narrow road as it followed the banks of a stream flowing west, into the sunset. At dusk, the air in this part of Chagang took on a purity that made the light a river of memories. All the more reason I was surprised when the captain grunted and crumpled to the ground.

Nothing happened for what seemed a long time. Then a lanky man wearing a sharkskin suit and huge running shoes stood up from behind a row of bushes, brushed off his trousers, and walked slowly toward me. Even in the fading light, I could see he was very much a Chinese policeman. There was no mistaking the haircut or the way he moved. Somebody had once been shocked to find Chinese where he didn’t expect them to be in Korea, not far from here. I knew how that felt.

The captain was on his back, completely still, with a pretty big hole in his head. That seemed strange, because the man walking toward me wasn’t carrying a weapon, not where I could see one, anyway. Nobody else was in sight, but I presented a good target, so I picked out a place to fall down in a hurry if the bushes started moving.

“We know who you are, Inspector,” the man said when he was close enough to be heard without shouting.

“I take it that’s a good thing.” I nodded at the captain’s body. “If you’d waited for a moment, I would have introduced you to my colleague.”

“Him we know. He’s responsible for the deaths of two of my men. He was supposedly working for me, only I knew he wasn’t. I warned him a few times. It didn’t take. So, he’s gone.”

“Just like that.”

“Just like that. And you, Inspector, I understand you are about to do funny things in funny places. Funny things happen to people in such cases.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You don’t know? I’m talking about your trip to Macau. You aren’t welcome there. I can’t guarantee your well-being if you go.”

“Who the hell are you to be telling me where I can go and where I can’t go?”

“Just someone trying to pass along a little friendly advice.”

“Friendly advice? Since when is a hole in the head friendly advice?”

“When it isn’t your head.”

I don’t react well when people standing next to me are shot. “Maybe on your own soil you can hand out advice. But this land, here, on this side of that river, isn’t yours, or perhaps you need to check a modern map. The weather may come from your side. The wind may blow from that direction most of the time. But that’s about all. The sun doesn’t rise there, the sky doesn’t start there, and I don’t have to put up with your threats while you’re standing in my country.” It was a long speech, maybe a little provocative under the circumstances. I looked down at the captain. The hole in his head wasn’t getting any smaller.

The Chinese policeman gave me a slow, ancient, imperial smile. “Keep it up, Inspector.” He started to walk back to the bushes where he’d first appeared, then stopped and looked over his shoulder. “The captain didn’t listen to me,” he shouted. “Think about it.” He disappeared from view, but I wasn’t inclined to find out where he went.

3

The next day, well before dawn, I put gas in the car and drove like a madman back to Pyongyang. When I got to the compound, I slowed down; I made it a point to move up the walkway in a manner that wouldn’t excite the tank gunners. Even though the door to Kim’s office was ajar, I knocked. The first time it had been a good move to go in unannounced. I didn’t think it was smart to make that sort of thing a habit, especially because as far as Kim knew, the captain and I were still on the border.

“Yes, Inspector, can I help you?” Kim had his back to the door, studying the old maps on the wall behind his desk. Apparently, he did know I wasn’t still in Chagang.

“What’s this about?”

“You mean your meeting with the Great Han up on the border? We’d all be better off if you didn’t talk to strangers.” He turned slowly to face me.

“I didn’t have much choice, actually. He was hard to ignore. You already knew he’d be there?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“Who is he? He put a hole in your captain’s head, or did you already know that, too?”

There was a slight pause, maybe an intake of breath. “I repeat, dealing with strange Chinese isn’t wise.”

“All Chinese are strange.”

“Good, Inspector, at last we agree on something.”

“How am I supposed to stay away from Chinese if I go to Macau?”

The face went several shades of red. “Who said you’re going to Macau?”

“The Great Han. He didn’t seem in any doubt that you were sending me. He emphasized that I’d better not go.”

Kim picked up the phone. “I want a meeting in my office in fifteen minutes.”

“Back to the previous question, how am I supposed to stay away from Chinese if I go to Macau? Or hadn’t you thought of that?”

Kim was writing a note. “There you mingle; here you don’t.”

“How is it that the Great Han knows what you’re going to do before you do it? Or shouldn’t I ask?”

“That’s what we’re going to find out, Inspector, as soon as you leave.”

“You going to cancel the trip? I don’t even have a suitcase.” I also didn’t plan to go. There was nothing I wanted to see in Macau. Driving to the border with the captain had been different. While I was in the windowless room reading that file, I’d felt a switch flip on somewhere inside me. It had been years since I’d looked at a file, traced connections, put together stray bits of information to see if they fit. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed it. But the image of the hole in the captain’s head was enough to convince me that nostalgia for operations wasn’t healthy.

“Cancel? Why should I? It’s not as if we’ve lost the element of surprise. Pang-that’s the Great Han’s name-would know as soon as you passed through Macau immigration anyway. He’s a colonel, and therefore impressed with himself. If it pleases him to think he has inside information on my plans, so much the better. It will give him more time to trip over his own big feet. We’re not going to cancel anything. We just need to be careful, that’s all. You, especially, need to take precautions.”

“No, I don’t, because I’m not going.”

“In Macau, the Chinese will pitch you; almost certainly they’ll make you an offer to work for them, as if they don’t already have enough of your people on their payroll. They’ll use anything and everything-a woman, money, a long-lost family member, maybe even an appeal to your sense of culture and history. Tell them to get lost. Can you do that for me?”

“Macau,” I said. “It’s a den of vice. People disappear.”

“Are you worried? After all of these years in the police, putting your life on the line for the citizens of Pyongyang, do I detect concern about personal safety? Come on, Inspector; you’re too old to fear the future. What have you got to lose anymore? Besides, I’m your friend, remember? Why would I send you on a trip if it was going to end badly?”

“The Chinese say, ‘If we have one more friend, we have one more door.’ I don’t need any new doors at this point in my life, especially if I don’t know where they lead.”

“So, you want to back out. Fine, we can deal with that.” He reached for the phone. “If you’re concerned about your safety…” He dialed a number. “I’ll get someone else.”

This was not a matter of pride. Anyone could see he thought he could shame me into going. It would have to be shame, because there was nothing else pushing me, nothing but a speck of curiosity about what this was about. I wasn’t working for him; I wasn’t working for anyone. Besides, the trees would still be on the mountain when I got back. They weren’t going anywhere. “I didn’t say you should get someone else. I said people disappear in Macau. I take it that’s what I’m supposed to do, find someone who disappeared there.”

Major Kim put down the phone. The face tiptoed around appearing cagey. “Not exactly.”

“What, exactly?”

“On the one hand you might say that a woman disappeared.”

Faint alarm bells rang. This wasn’t a road I wanted to go down. “Been there, done that. I like women I can see. If they disappear, I can’t see them.”

“Only, she didn’t actually disappear. It’s more like she disintegrated. Or maybe you could say disarticulated. Since most people can’t do something like that to themselves, by themselves, we’re interested.”

“Someone hacked her up, and you want me to put the pieces back together again.”

“Not exactly.” I felt that flutter in my stomach, the one that means my head hasn’t caught up with what the rest of me already realizes is a reason to turn around and go the other way. “The Macau police think they can identify who did it.” Kim said this slowly.

“Then, you must want them to think otherwise.” I paused. “Is this the ‘little problem’ you mentioned the first night we talked?”

Kim raised his chin a millimeter.

“You’re not thinking of setting me up, are you? Having me met at planeside by a team of Macau detectives who will take me to a dark room and beat me for a week until I confess?”

“This woman showed up in pieces, Inspector, over two weeks ago. You have nothing to confess. The whole time you’ve been either on your mountaintop or under my control. How could you have strangled her, chopped her up in the bathtub of a suite in the Grand Lisboa Hotel, carried a matched set of luggage through the lobby at seven A.M. after eating a breakfast of tea and rice congee, and dumped the larger suitcase, the red four-wheeler, in the harbor where it floated for a full day before being picked up by the police who had been tipped off by a Japanese reporter waiting at the scene with a camera crew?”

“I never liked congee.”

“Unassailable proof of innocence. Find something equally airtight for the person whom the Macau police are unjustly accusing.”

“You want me to make it clear to the police that they are barking up the wrong tree, still assuming you are not setting me up. Still assuming that I’ll actually go.”

“Go to Macau, Inspector. Put the police on the proper scent. Get them off the wrong tree, as you put it. Above all, stop worrying. What enjoyment is there in life if every angle has to be covered? You might even have fun in Macau.”

No, I would not. There was nothing about this picture that pointed to fun. “Your friend Pang advised me not to go. He sounded serious. Not to dwell on the point, but he killed the captain with one shot in bad light.”

“Go; find what needs to be found. Clarify what needs clarification. Wipe clean whatever window seems befogged to you. My only advice: Stay away from willowy Chinese girls, from full-bodied Portuguese tarts, and from whatever else they throw in your path. Then, mission complete, we’ll drive you in style back to your mountain, where you can saw boards until the end of time. What could be simpler?”

“One thing.”

“What?”

“You haven’t told me who didn’t do it.” It was the sort of thing I never wanted to say but did anyway.

“That’s not your concern.”

“Maybe not, but I’d like to know. Call it professional curiosity.”

“Go downstairs to the second floor to pick up your tickets and passport. The ticket should be for the day after tomorrow. They’ll have some travel money for you, too. Don’t waste it; we’ll need an accounting. It will probably take you an hour to get everything done. When you’re finished down there, come back up here.”

The passport had a ten-year-old photograph of me, but the clerk said it was close enough. It was a South Korean passport, which got under my skin. The travel money was practically nothing; the clerk said I was lucky to get as much as I did and if I played my cards right in Macau maybe I could turn it into a neat little pile. When I went back upstairs, there was a small man with an expensive haircut in a black shirt and black tie sitting in the green chair across from Kim. They stopped talking when I walked in.

“That will be all,” Kim said to the man, who stood up and left without acknowledging me as he brushed by. He had on expensive cologne, a lot of it.

“Who is your thuggish friend who gets the good chair?” I waved away a perfumed nimbus.

“Just someone who thinks the northeast is his territory to dispense.” Kim was looking through a small notebook.

“Oh, really? Of course, you set him straight. He understands it’s not his and it’s not yours, either.”

“You got the passport?”

“I assume he isn’t part of your operation.”

“What are you talking about?”

“His shoes cost more than you make in six months. He’s been drinking. Even his cologne bath couldn’t cover the alcohol. Your discipline can’t be that bad. Besides, he is Chinese.”

Kim looked up, momentarily amused.

“I’m wondering, though, why you were so tense when he was here? He doesn’t look the type to have a hold on you. Still, your eyes have taken on that worried cast.”

“Worried?” Kim blinked, twice. “No, Inspector. I may have braced myself, that’s all. Zhao is not someone with whom you have a casual conversation.”

“So, why the sudden silence when I walked in? What’s he to me? You wouldn’t have left the door open like that if you didn’t want to make sure that we brushed antennae.”

“Let’s put it this way: If Zhao is in a good mood, he can be your patron, even your protector, in faraway places. He’ll supply your needs and embellish your wants, beyond what you’ve got in that little envelope of travel money you’re holding. He can also put you in touch with the right people in Macau. His access to the influential is exceeded only by his bank accounts.”

“This, as you say, is if he is in a good mood. If not?”

“If not, he has a pet rat who can remove your lungs and use them to stuff the pillows of the orphans he’s had a hand in creating. Zhao believes grief is a bad thing, a burden on society, so if he murders a husband, he makes sure to murder the wife.”

“I have no wife.”

“No one to grieve for you? Then the man’s work is simplified.”

“I’d rather this Zhao stick to enlarging my wants.”

“ ‘Embellish,’ Inspector. I said ‘embellish.’ ”

“Another friend, another door?”

“You’ll have to ask him yourself. It’s not my job to read his mind. We coexist, that’s all.”

“You can’t arrest him?”

Kim smiled. I began recording a series of variables in my head-corners of the mouth, forehead, eye crinkling. This was the first entry, so there was no basis for comparison, but on the face of it, I thought it could go down as “wan.”

“No, Inspector, I can’t arrest him, not if I want to keep breathing. Unlike you, I do have a wife-a wife and two children.”

“What about the Great Han? Can’t he do something? Surely he doesn’t approve of someone like Zhao.”

“I guess you could say the Great Han prefers to keep breathing, too.”

4

I went back to the hotel to think things over. It still wasn’t too late to tell Kim to find someone else to go to Macau. I had made it a point never to get involved with gangsters while I was in the Ministry, because I knew it would be nothing but a headache. There was a tiny section in a dark office in the headquarters building that dealt with all gangs-Chinese, Japanese, Russian, and whatever else the wind blew across the borders. Gangsters were tough people, very smooth for the most part, and for the most part deadly. That was only half the problem. The rest of the problem-and the most difficult part-came from the fact that other entities, various central committee departments, military groups, special services, and we never knew for sure what else, loved to run operations using foreign gangs. We were never informed ahead of time. If we got in the way of an operation, we were in trouble. It took a lot of careful footwork to stay clear of something you didn’t know existed. One hot summer, a Japanese gang tried to set up shop in my sector. It wasn’t a big operation, but I was against letting them hang around, so I complained through channels. Channels told me to mind my business. It turned out a couple of the gang members were working for a foreign intelligence service and weren’t very discreet about it, so after a few months the whole operation was shut down and moved to the east coast.

Around six o’clock, Kim called and asked if I wanted to go out for dinner. “Sure,” I said. Either he was working overtime to cultivate me or he was seriously isolated in his own machinery. The girl in the red dress met us at the door, only this time she was wearing blue. “Blue is definitely your color,” I told her.

She tossed her head. “This way,” she said to Major Kim, and led us back to the triangular table.

Michael had the night off. We were waited on by Bruce, who had the same austere smile. I figured they handed them out in the kitchen, along with the white jackets.

Even before the drinks arrived, I got to the point. “Forget about it.” That was as direct as I knew how to be. “I’m not going to Macau or anywhere else, except back to the mountain.”

Kim was looking at the menu. “The quail looks good,” he said.

“I’m not about to get back into all of this running around. Consider me a candle with nothing left to burn. No flame, all consumed. Look around, Major. Look. Look for heaven’s sake!” I tried to keep my voice down. I wasn’t sure what I wanted him to look at.

“Oh, Christ.” He put down the menu. “You’re wallowing like a pig in self-pity, Inspector. You sound like you’re about to start singing an anthem to regret. A life wasted, wrong turns taken. Don’t, please. Keep it to yourself.”

“Look to the future, is that it? Let the past fall away. And where will it fall? In what peaceful graveyard do we bury the past?”

“Graveyard? More probably, a garbage dump in your case. You’d better hope all the years you spent in service of this mob can be recycled. Is there a great universal machine that takes old time and makes it new? How should I know? And why should I care? We’re not here to compare philosophy notes. I’m supposed to throw a rope across this pathetic chasm of a country. I don’t look down. I don’t notice if there are rotting corpses or rivers of gold. Makes no difference. They want a rope so they can build a bridge from here to there. It starts with a rope. That’s you, Inspector. That’s you.”

I shook my head. “Don’t bet on it.”

5

The next afternoon, I went downstairs to complain about my phone. It was blinking, and it wouldn’t stop.

“That means you have messages,” said the clerk. With his wrist extended just so, he indicated the button on the phone that meant messages. “You push this and your mailbox will tell you what messages you have. We’ll make it easy. I’ll push the button; you listen,” he said. The message said I was to stand under the canopy at the front door at 1:00 P.M. It was almost one, so I started out the door. The man with the long stare had been at the far end of the counter, watching me, the whole time.

“Do we know each other?” I walked over to him. “Because if we don’t, you’re getting on my nerves.”

He shrugged, a gesture with no impact on a stare.

I went outside, and a minute later a black car appeared.

A little man jumped out from the passenger side and opened the rear door. “In,” he said. “Now.”

I got in. The same man who had been in Kim’s office was sitting in the shadows. He had switched cologne. The new stuff seemed to destroy oxygen and possibly affected the light as well. I’d never seen the backseat of a car so dark. It was like taking a drive in a black hole. That was not a comforting thought, and I started to sweat. The door slammed shut. Now all of the light from the outside was gone. I could see Zhao, dimly, but I couldn’t see my own body. When I held up my hands, they weren’t there.

“A nice illusion, Inspector. It gives people a sense of disquiet-who is here and who is not? Well, life is transitory, like pleasure.”

“We have business?” Maybe it was only an illusion, but for some reason I had no trouble seeing Zhao’s eyes. He was looking at me with unrelenting dislike. A stare may be unnerving, but it is basically passive. This look was launching a thousand poison-tipped arrows. “Or are we going to discuss Aristotle?”

The driver accelerated around a curve, and the car jumped ahead. We might have been preparing to take off, for all I knew.

“Some of the roads around here aren’t all that good.” I felt around for a seat belt. “Your driver might want to take it easy.”

“Don’t worry about the roads, Inspector, or belting yourself in. These are the least of your concerns.”

“In that case, let me go to the obvious question: What are the most of my concerns?”

Zhao laughed. He might have been a panther sitting on a branch above the forest floor, licking his paws and laughing. His eyes were embers; his teeth shone; his hair was sleek. For the first time I could make out what he was wearing. Black, all black-black sweater, black trousers, black shoes. They should have been invisible in the darkness.

“The most immediate of your concerns is simply how to stay alive.” The focus dissolved from his eyes. “I don’t mean right now. You’re in no danger at the moment. But next month, next year.” He sighed. “Who can tell, the times are so unstable. In such times, we need to be under-”

The car swerved violently to the left. I was thrown against the door, but Zhao didn’t move.

“You see, Inspector? This is exactly what I was saying. In unstable times, you need something secure, something you can hold on to.”

“And why do you think the times are unstable?” They must have removed the seat belt on my side, because I couldn’t find it. “Maybe there’s nothing wrong with the times.”

“Yes, that’s right. Exactly right. As usual, you’re on the mark. That’s what people have told me: ‘Inspector O is a man who can see through the fog.’ Can you actually do that?”

“Fog is not a problem.”

“No? And what is?”

“Bullshit is the problem. You’re wasting my time, Zhao. Get to the point.” I didn’t think I wanted him as a lifelong friend, so there wasn’t much to lose by being blunt. He wanted to scare me, rough me up mentally. So far, it wasn’t working.

Zhao’s lids dropped, and for a moment I thought he was dying. Sleek and dangerous one moment, dying the next. Not all that unusual, especially for a gangster. He opened his eyes again slowly. “You plan to go to Macau. I don’t think that is wise.”

“Not wise.”

“What happens in Macau isn’t your business.”

“Everyone seems to have a great deal of interest in this trip. Major Kim thinks it quite important that I go. So does Colonel Pang, as a matter of fact.” That was not strictly true, but it seemed to me that Zhao wasn’t a stickler for honesty. He and Pang apparently didn’t get along; I needed to know exactly how bad their relations were. It took less than a heartbeat to find out.

“If I were you, I would stay as far away from that bastard Pang as I possibly could. People like him are a deadly disease, and you don’t want to catch it.”

“Anything else? I like my advice in a big bag so I can keep it all in one place. When advice comes in dribs and drabs, it can get mislaid, you know what I mean?”

“Here’s something for your bag, then.” The window on my side opened. “Take a good look, Inspector. This is my territory now.”

“What is it about you people? This is not your country. It’s not yours, never has been, never will be-not now, not ever.”

Zhao cocked his head, the first sign I had that he was really paying attention. “Down, boy, I said ‘territory,’ not ‘country.’ I don’t need your ragtag nation. But I’m serious about my territory. What’s mine is mine. Do I make myself clear? And no one takes it away from me. Not Pang, not your brothers in the South. And especially not you.”

Something clicked. “You and Kim share a dangerous misconception. You both think my ragtag nation has already collapsed. You seem to think you can move in at this point to bite chunks off the carcass.”

“I don’t think.” Zhao lit a cigarette. His eyes reflected the glow. They became yellow and luminous, bright spotlights in the black. “Thinking is all about assumptions, and perceptions, and convictions. To think is to assume rationality, and that can be very fatal. I act on instinct.” Again, the panther, outwardly in repose, his head resting against the back of the seat, but every muscle alert, every nerve primed. “Yes, your country is a corpse. And you only have a few weeks, maybe a month, to decide whether to die with it or to get away. I can give you a comfortable new existence, a new life. I have money, friends, a place where you can enjoy life for the years you have left.”

“And what should I do to earn this reward of rebirth?”

“Do nothing, nothing at all. It’s an ancient principle, Taoist, not exactly in its pure form, of course. I have adapted it slightly. But the core remains intact.”

“The essence of the concept is effortlessness, Zhao, not ‘do nothing.’ Give oneself up to the flow of the universe, become in perfect harmony with Righteousness. That is not ‘nothing,’ but everything.”

“No!” He sat up suddenly. I saw the driver wince and turn his head, which told me that the conversation was being piped into the front. It also told me that the driver was missing part of his left ear. “No! I’m not going to get into a philosophical duel with you. I’ve given you a choice. Get out of my way or get run over. That’s it. That’s your choice. At the moment you’re in my way. Very much in my way.”

“I’ll take my chances.” The panther didn’t want me to go to Macau. That made it simple. I was going.

The car pulled over. The door opened and the little man leaned inside. “Out,” he said. “Now.”

“You should learn to speak in complete sentences,” I said to him before he climbed into the front seat and slammed the door. I waved, but as far as I could tell, no one waved back.

6

That evening, Colonel Pang met me near the Taedong River. He left a message at the front desk that he would be across from the monument at dusk and that perhaps we should try getting acquainted under better circumstances than we had the first time. Kim obviously didn’t like him, and neither did Zhao. If the enemy of my enemy was my friend, that seemed to go double for Pang. I decided it was worth finding out what was on his mind.

“I’m sorry you got mixed up with Zhao,” he said. “I should have warned you.”

“Do you have a free pass across the border? How did you get here?”

“The border isn’t much of problem these days, Inspector. You could go out and come back all without a passport if you wanted to.”

“I’d rather not get my shoes wet.” I could see that he had two bodyguards with him. One was about ten meters ahead; the other was the same distance behind. “Are we going to hold the entire meeting here, or should we walk a little, to give the SSD teams some exercise?”

“Either way. I like rivers. They are unambiguous dividing points. There is nothing uncertain about where you stand in relation to a river. You’re either on this side or that. Borders shift around; rivers are usually more permanent. Don’t look now, but up ahead on that bench is one of Zhao’s men. It’s his number three, a real viper. From what the coroner in Shenyang tells me, he spits poison in the eyes of his victims.”

“Why, I don’t know, but a lot of people seem to want to be helpful these days, giving me warnings. Let me return the favor. You ought to know-if someone hasn’t made this clear already-that Zhao is not going to throw you a birthday party this year.”

Pang moved his head and put his finger on a scar that went vertically down the left side of his throat. “This was not from a love bite, Inspector. The key point to understand at the moment is that Zhao doesn’t want us cooperating.”

“We’re not.”

“Zhao doesn’t know that. No one who sees us walking together at sunset along the river would know that.” Pang smiled at me. A person might think it was a pleasant smile. A person might even forget about the hole in the captain’s head.

“How do you suppose that Zhao knows that I am going to Macau?”

“Zhao knows a great deal. That shouldn’t surprise you, Inspector.”

“Who told him?”

“He goes into a lot of offices during the course of a day, as you know.”

“True, it could have been Major Kim, but it could as easily have been you. You knew about it even before I did.”

“Why would I want to tell Zhao anything?”

“That’s what I’m wondering.”

“Good, keep wondering.” As we passed the viper, Pang smiled again-well this side of pleasant-and said something in a Chinese dialect that threw hatchets. The security man in front of us had stopped and watched closely, his right hand in his jacket pocket. “I mentioned that I’d heard about his mother and turtles. I don’t think he liked it.” Pang looked at his watch. “I have an hour or two to kill, Inspector; would you care to join me for a drink? Don’t worry. I don’t shoot people at close range. There’s no challenge to it.”

“In that case,” I said, “I accept.”

Pang ran up a flight of stone steps that led away from the river. At the top of the steps a car waited, its engine running. “There’s a place north of the city, not very far away. We’ll be back at the hotel before anyone misses you. Please, get in.”

7

As Pang promised, we ended up north of the city. For a moment, I thought we were heading to the airport-which suggested I might be going to Beijing in a box-but we turned off onto a dirt road and drove for about twenty minutes before stopping outside a compound lit with strings of electric lanterns. Through the gate, I could see a pond with four Chinese maple trees around it. Chinese maples are showy and overly delicate. The leaves take a lot of time deciding whether to end up as scarlet or yellow. A few had cut short the agony and dropped into the pond. Off to one side of the compound was a one-story building with no windows and a large radio antenna on the roof. A guard stood in front of the door. He was Chinese, carried a Chinese rifle, and didn’t seem to like me looking at him.

“You might say this is an embassy annex, Inspector. We can have drinks over there.” Pang pointed across a miniature brook with a tiny bridge. “We’ll sit on the pavilion and be serene. Maybe a poem will come to you.”

We sat on mats, which my knees hated instantly. “All very lovely,” I said. “I never knew there was an embassy annex here. I don’t think my Ministry knew it, either.” From the looks of it, this was newly built, and screamingly illegal.

“Of course, this is all fairly recent.” Pang gestured to someone I couldn’t see. “We’ve had the land for a long time.” He gave me a bland look. “The current situation has called for a few adjustments in normal protocol. The paperwork always trails behind. I’m sure you’ve had the same experience.” A woman came out of a low white building some distance from the pavilion. She put down two porcelain teacups and a pot in the shape of a bird. “We’ll have tea,” Pang said. “Would you like ginseng tea?”

“No, I can’t stand it.”

“A Korean who does not like ginseng tea? Can this be? Well, in that case, let me suggest something else. I can offer you very good tea from Zhejiang. I’m sure you’ll appreciate it. General Su Dingfang drank the same tea from these very cups.”

The woman had moved away to stand beside one of the maples. Beneath the lanterns, a smile danced across her lips as she saw Pang pour the tea into my cup.

“Let the tea set for a moment, Inspector. The fragrance builds beautifully if you wait.”

I waited, but not for the tea. Su Dingfang was a T’ang Dynasty general who invaded Korea. He had the help of other Koreans, true enough. If these were his teacups, they were in remarkably good shape. Pang’s had a tiny chip on the rim. The glaze on mine was cracked, but I would be, too, if I were thirteen hundred years old. Assuming these were actually General Su’s teacups, what was Pang doing with them?

“If you like, Major Su over there could refresh your understanding of history.” The woman nodded. “She is a descendent of the general. The teacups have been in her family all these years. They wouldn’t be sitting here in front of us otherwise. It’s quite an honor, don’t you think?”

If I didn’t get up in another minute, I would never stand again. I put my hand on the floor behind me and leaned back to relieve the pressure on my knees. “Don’t tell me, the family thought it would be a filial gesture, returning the teacups to the general’s old battlegrounds.”

Pang rested his hand on the teapot. “They thought the cups would bring the major good luck in her mission. And I am delighted to have her ancestor here with me.”

“A long, long time ago, Colonel. Didn’t you tell me that borders change? The border right now is down the middle of your beloved rivers. That’s where it is going to stay.”

“Don’t misunderstand, Inspector; I’m not here to seize territory. But if some of your countrymen want assistance in resisting pressure from another kingdom, there is a long history of our making ourselves available. Didn’t Baekche ask us for help? In fact, in recent years we’ve been happy to provide shelter for a number of generals from your army who thought it best to live on our side of the river for a while. Now? Well, now they have decided they might want to go home. And we quite agree. In any case, Chinese have been here before, and now they are here again.” He picked up his teacup. “We are quite tolerant, you’ll see.”

“The Japanese have also been here before,” I said, “but that doesn’t mean we want them back.”

“Surely, Inspector, you aren’t comparing us to them.”

“I know General Su was a great military leader.” I bid farewell to my knees. It was hopeless. I would have to be wheeled around from now on. “I also seem to recall-and you or the major will correct me if I am mistaken-that he went home in defeat, having failed to take Pyongyang.” I picked up my cup. It was very delicate. If I crushed it between my fingers, I would not be doing history any favors.

Pang sipped his tea. “All the better for Major Su to return and remedy that.” He smiled. “You could be valuable to your people, Inspector. If you’d rather work with your brothers in the South, of course I understand. But I can tell you that there is no way that they will reclaim this entire peninsula. And anyway, do you think there is any chance that they will integrate you into their fat and happy world? That would set their economy back decades, depress their living standards, lower wages, siphon off capital, create a burden to support twenty-four million needy people-and your people are needy, Inspector. You cannot dispute that.” He waited to see if I would respond.

I put the teacup down gently. “I can dispute anything,” I said. “The question is, what good will it do?”

“Let me be blunt. We know that some of your southern brothers plan to set up a gangster state on your territory. They need it to make money, to hide money, to move money. Other people think such a state will be useful because it can become an ideal platform for operations of all sorts against my country. There used to be such places elsewhere-Macau, for example. But we’ve been shutting down Macau, inch by inch. It is very slow going. Ridding even that tiny island of corruption is not like washing your face. It’s not simply dirt; it has become organic. The job might take several more years to finish, maybe even a decade. Meanwhile, it has already become uncomfortable enough that the big people, important people, are looking elsewhere. People like Zhao. People who give Major Kim his orders. And where do maggots go? To a rotting corpse.”

“Should I start composing poetry now, or should we wait a few more minutes?”

Pang’s expression hardened. “We won’t let that take place on our border. We will never let events come to that. I told you not to go to Macau, but now I’ve changed my mind. Go; look around. It’s better if you get some sense of what happens when corruption takes root. I don’t mean the petty bribery that goes on everywhere; I mean the full-blown version that turns men rancid. If it doesn’t sicken you, if you don’t come back here and tell me that you will work with us, I will be surprised.”

“And you do not like to be surprised.”

“It’s not that I don’t like it. It’s that I’m careful to make sure surprise doesn’t touch my existence, in any way.” His mood visibly improved. “Why don’t I put on some music for us?”

“Chinese opera, perhaps?” I was not looking forward to that, but it seemed all too likely in the presence of General Su and his cups.

“Do you like Chinese opera, Inspector? I can’t stand it. The spectacle is tolerable; at least the costumes are a distraction from the noise. But a recording? I wouldn’t even want to saw boards to it.” He must have realized his mistake immediately, because he reached in his pocket and pulled out a small, paper-thin piece of wood.

“I understand you are much attracted to trees. This is a piece of white birch, from a forest near Harbin. Mean anything to you?”

“As your research has obviously discovered, my father was born in Harbin.” Pang had done his homework. This was his way of telling me that he could step into my life and rearrange it any time he wanted. He didn’t care if I despised him for it, as long as I understood.

Major Su walked over and took away the teacups. Pang waited until she had disappeared inside the white building. “If you look carefully, you’ll see that on the piece of wood is a phone number. The digits are quite small and rather faint, but you should have no trouble making them out. If you see or hear anything in Macau that has a bearing on the fate of your country, call me. Tell the person who answers that you owe me money. They will put you through to me immediately, any time night or day.”