possible. You can’t stay out of what’s happening. Anyway, it will only be this once. You have the memory, the bridge that goes across the-”
“Nope. No bridge, no key, no memory. Look at me.”
He glanced quickly in my direction.
“I’m older than my grandfather was when he died. What do they want with me anymore?”
“Get in the car. Tell them yourself. I’m tired of arguing with people.”
3
It took thirty minutes down the winding road to the floor of the valley, past the shack with the covered porch where the guards sat on their haunches and watched the flowers grow alongside the fields. When we got to the river, I told the driver to turn around and go back.
“Why?”
“Either we go back or I get out right here.”
It took another half hour, past the guard shack again, up the winding road to my house. I went inside and took my time going through the box of wood chips. I already knew the choices were limited. Pine, oak, and chestnut-not an ideal mix under the circumstances. Something-some part of the ancient brain-warned me to keep looking. I rooted around for whatever could cope with complexity or anxiety, or both. Pine was too simple- minded; oak and chestnut were both stubborn in their own way. I remembered a piece of larch, a very calm tree, leaning against the back wall and was thinking of cutting off a couple of chips when a horn sounded, four impatient blasts. Back in the car, the driver was annoyed, eyes blinking furiously like a ferret that has been told it is not an ox.
“Late,” he said. “We’ll be late and they’ll want to know why.”
“Tell them it was my fault.”
“That’s what I plan to do. Don’t say we went back to get your damned wood chips. They warned me about you and wood.”
Down the winding road again, the turns taken close to the edge; past the guards, who were now alarmed and trying to bring their telephone to life; across the river, which was reduced to an autumn trickle over the rocks; another three hours on rutted dirt roads to the highway, and almost two more to Pyongyang. The sunlight was gone by the time we hit the outskirts.
“Why so many checkpoints?” I stared out at the line of cars on the side of the road. “We never needed this many before. Even those we had were seriously overmanned.”
“They’re not checkpoints. They’re places people stop after they go out for a drive. They get food and gasoline.”
“Go out for a drive? You kidding?”
“Relax, why don’t you?”
Up to now, neither of us had said much. But silence can weigh on a situation. That’s why we always tried to keep up some sort of conversation when we brought people in. Nothing too complicated, very normal conversation in a normal tone of voice. A couple of the cars had tape players in them so we could listen to music if we ran out of things to say. This was a new car, but I couldn’t see a tape player.
“You sure nothing is going on?” We’d sped past another checkpoint-rest stop.
The driver didn’t break his blank expression. From the right side, he looked even more like a ferret. I could tell he was ignoring me from the way he watched the road real intently, lips twitching every so often. I tried again. “You got enough gas?”
He kept his eyes glued to the road.
“You’re new,” I said. “I’d guess you’re the most junior, because they assigned you to drive. That’s how we used to do it most of the time. Good practice for the junior ones to drive. Gets you familiar with the roads in a way that doesn’t happen when you’re sitting next to the driver. Drivers pay attention. Passengers don’t. You ever notice that?”
He was still breathing, so I knew he had heard me.
“But then again, you’re by yourself, so you can’t be completely green. There must not be much to do these days if they could spare you to come all the way up there for me. Funny, they didn’t send you up the first time. It was two others. Maybe they were friends of yours? In the old days, we used to like to keep some continuity once an operation was underway. Even if the team had to be changed, we kept at least one of them involved; that way the subject felt the whole thing was connected-kind of a psychological leash, that sort of approach. Usually very effective; calmed the subject in a funny way. Do I look calm to you?”
His lips tightened.
“What happened to the other two?” We bounced over a railroad crossing. “Went on vacation and left you with the chores?”
We were well into the city by now. The driver made a sudden right into a narrow street and pulled over. “Shut up.” He swallowed hard and stared at me.
“Sure,” I said. “I’m only making small talk.”
“Well, don’t.”
We drove slowly another thirty meters down the street before he honked the horn, just a tap. A light went on over a gate, the gate opened, and a tall man wearing a long black coat appeared. He motioned for the driver to get out. The two of them spoke briefly, keeping their voices low. The ferret disappeared inside the gate; the man in the coat got behind the wheel.
“Long time, Li,” I said, and looked away. We’d worked together for a while, but then there had been trouble-hard to remember exactly what-and he was sent away to the east coast. It hadn’t been an amicable parting, a few days of nasty looks and tough words before his orders showed up. He came back to Pyongyang, assigned to the Minister’s retinue, shortly before I left for good.
“Friendly, as always, Inspector. You bring a change of clothes?”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning after a few weeks maybe you’ll get tired of that shirt you’re wearing and wonder about changing into something else. Another shirt, maybe even a tie, would help. It’s a nice touch to change clothes occasionally when you’re with other people and not pretending to be a monk on a mountaintop.”
“Who said I was pretending to be a monk? The deal was I go away and they leave me alone. I kept the core of it real simple so there wouldn’t be any problem with misinterpretation-no complications, no loopholes or contingency clauses. I go up on the mountain and stay out of everyone’s way. They don’t bother me; I don’t bother them. It was supposed to ensure peace and quiet all around. You know that was the deal; you were there when we signed the papers. I’ve lived up to my end all these years.” I brooded for a moment. “Why did you send a ferret to get me?”
Li made a slow left turn onto a wide street.
“I’m not hanging around here for a few weeks,” I said. “No one gets to change that agreement. I went back and forth on the language for weeks. It’s very precise.” I looked at the line of streetlights down the avenue that led to the big square. They were all on, every one of them. “Visitors? Who are we trying to impress?”
“We have lights on most streets now, except where we need it dark. Things have changed a little.”
“I’ll bet.”
He shrugged. “Have it your way.”
“If I had it my way, I wouldn’t be here right now.”
“Yeah, I know. You’d be sawing a piece of wood. People still talk about you, O.”
“Nice to be remembered, I guess. Nicer to be forgotten.”
We drove across the square; just past the party’s offices, we turned into a narrow street.
