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.”
