“Did you ask him from what to what?”
“We didn’t get that far. We were only on the first date.”
“German sugarplums are dancing in their heads, Inspector. They think we’re going to fall on our knees and beg forgiveness for seventy years of sin, like the East Germans did.”
“Are we?”
“You can if you want to. I have other ideas.”
“So do the Chinese, apparently.”
“They’ve got Kim worried?” There was a note of urgency in the question, not much, but I was weighing every word Kang used, measuring every inflection. The question could have been nothing, but the way Kang asked it told me this was something he really wanted to know. And that told me his network had a hole in it.
I thought over what Kim had said about the Chinese. The file I’d read in the windowless room had contained page after page about Chinese penetration into the country-agents operating under different sorts of cover, defectors being fed back in, agents of influence in the security services. “Worried,” I said, “but not as much as I would have guessed. He thinks he has a handle on it.”
“A handle. He has a handle on China. Mull that over a little. I’ll be interested in what you conclude. And while you’re at it, think about what you were doing in Macau.”
“I was putting the Macau police off the scent. It’s not like they had a click-clack case.”
“Click-clack.” Kang closed his eyes and thought a moment. “You were talking to Luis.”
“You know Luis?”
“Luis helped me with a complicated funding issue some years ago.”
“That’s funny. He told me he couldn’t even launder his shirts.”
Kang smiled. “Luis knows more about laundering money than anyone alive or dead.”
“Tell me that he’s not MSS.”
“Luis? Not anymore. He and discipline don’t do well together. They transferred him to the police, where they figured he couldn’t do any harm.”
“When I was in Pyongyang, someone told me I don’t even know what I don’t know.”
“True.”
“So, maybe you can tell me. What don’t I know?”
Kang moved his coat and sat down on the sofa. “I’ll give you the thirty-second version. Two years ago, the center, aging and unwell, decided that by 2017 he wanted to achieve a first-stage unity between the two Koreas.” Kang turned around and yelled toward the kitchen, “Kulov, bring another glass and some of your awful vodka.”
Kulov appeared with both items. He put them on the table in front of Kang, nodded to me, and returned to the kitchen.
Kang poured a few drops for himself and a few for me. “Kulov keeps the vodka hidden, but I know where it is. Cheers, Inspector.”
“We were on first-stage unity.”
“That year, as you realize, will mark the one hundred and fifth birthday of his father and his own seventy-fifth. The plan he has in mind, I’m told, is for a loose union, largely cosmetic but enough for him to be able to claim success in reuniting the ‘bloodlines’ of the Korean people, if not the territory. Last year, the two sides agreed to limited and quiet exchanges of personnel, mostly in the field of internal security.”
“Funny place to start,” I said.
“It would be in the real world, but, as we know, this isn’t the real world. So everyone decided that they wanted eyes and ears right where they could do the most good. Pyongyang sent two incompetents to Seoul from a department that shall remain nameless.”
“And whom did Seoul send?”
“Its very best, also incompetent but well shod and well fed. This exchange led to a lot of stumbling around for the better part of twelve months. Then, in March this year, the center had another health setback, serious enough to be confined to bed but not so serious that it was impossible to issue orders. I have my suspicions about who else is in the room when those orders are signed, but we can talk about that later. In any case, the South saw this development as a chance to replace its people with someone who actually knew what he was doing, could consolidate the gains, and could even-with a little luck-go on to the next phase. In pursuit of these goals, the incompetents were recalled and Major Kim was sent to Pyongyang in April. He had orders to proceed in all haste to achieve the consolidation part of the plan, and then to move with caution to explore the possibilities for next steps.”
“How do you know so much about the South’s plans?”
“Not everyone in the North is incompetent, Inspector. And Kim is not as smart as he thinks.”
“All very interesting, but none of it explains why Kim sent me to Macau.”
“It does, in a way. Consider: Officials in Pyongyang with even one eye open are already concerned about the drift of events, and have been searching for a rallying point, some sort of brake on what they recognize as dangerous, almost fatal South Korean inroads. To buy time, they have been urging that one of the center’s sons be put in place immediately to ensure stability for an eventual transition. They gather all of this under the cloak of carrying out plans for the first stage of ‘national unity.’ That isn’t what they want, of course, but it’s the best they can hope for until they figure out something better.”
Click. Clack. “Up the chimney and out to sea,” I said. I nudged my glass nearer the bottle in hopes that Kang would pour more-a lot more. There was a leadership transition in the works? And a successor in play? And I figured in this exactly how? I had been brought down from the mountain to be thrown headfirst into a pit of snakes, big snakes, the sort of snakes that swallow full-grown deer and then burp with pleasure. My hands weren’t shaking, but if Kang didn’t fill the glass right away, I might not be able to hold it still. “That was the chosen son whose tracks I was sent to erase in Macau, wasn’t it? Chopping up a prostitute can’t be very good for a smooth transition.” I remembered the room and its view. Nonchalance fled as reality knocked at the door. “No wonder Kim wanted me to get the evidence pointing somewhere else.”
Kang waited a moment before letting a few drops fall into my glass. “You actually believed him?”
“I take it you mean that wasn’t his intent.”
“Oh, no, he really did want you to go through the motions. One of Kim’s main tasks, though, is to accomplish exactly the opposite. He is supposed to make sure the son is so badly compromised that no one can possibly follow him. He must have wondered how to do that, until you crashed into view. Your appearance lets Kim claim that he’s made every effort to save the successor’s reputation, but due to the bad faith of the Chinese and the incompetence of a former North Korean policeman-the grandson of a Hero of the Republic no less-that has proved impossible. He discredits Beijing and the opposition in Pyongyang in one move. Brilliant.”
“I didn’t realize my skills were in such demand.”
Kang screwed the top on the bottle. Vodka time was over.
“This leaves me with a question.” I said. “Do you think the son did it? Murdered that prostitute in his hotel room?”
Richie coughed and fumbled with his glass. “How can you drink that potato water? Have a bit of this whiskey, why don’t you?”
“The Chinese have become concerned,” Kang ignored my question, “and concern has rapidly become alarm, at what the South is doing. Colonel Pang and his teacups are already moving to stop the process.” Astounding, did Kang have Chinese maples on his payroll? “But the scent of blood is on the wind. Gangs from China and everywhere else see an opportunity to carve up the country into spheres of influence. For all I know, the Mafia has set up shop on Kwangbok Street.”
“You forgot something.”
“The opposition. Yes, meanwhile, there is a loose resistance building against outside efforts to seize on the situation. It isn’t anything coordinated-yet.”
