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
