“Him?” Kim was glancing over a report. He made a notation in the margin, put a big star next to one passage, and turned the page over. “We don’t know who he is. Your people say they’ve never heard of him and have no records. Should I believe them?”
“My people? You mean the Ministry? They might not have any records, but someone sure as hell knows who he is. Anonymity is not a hallmark of what we have built here all of these years, believe me. Why not bring him in?”
“You worried? You want a personal bodyguard? The man is just staring, Inspector.”
“I was only letting you know, that’s all. If he’s one of yours, call him off, would you? It’s unnerving.”
“I told you, he’s not one of mine. Maybe he belongs to Zhao. His people don’t have much going on in their heads, so they tend to stare. That’s not your biggest problem right now.”
“I take it that means you can’t bring him in. I thought you were in charge.”
“In charge? What an idea! I’m hanging on for dear life, Inspector. An admission of weakness that I probably shouldn’t make to you, but you might as well know where things stand. There is no cooperation, only a sullen quiet when I walk into the room. What do you think is going on? You seemed to understand the situation with SSD. What else can you tell me?”
“How would I know?”
“How would you know, that’s exactly my question. Incidentally, I was told this morning that we lost track of you in Macau for several days. Why?”
“If you thought I was going to let that madman Zhao follow me around, you’re crazy. If you could keep tabs on me, so could he. I took some precautions. Nothing elaborate.”
Kim was suddenly alert. “What makes you think Zhao was in Macau?”
“Nothing. I just wasn’t taking any chances. I told you, I took some precautions, that’s all.”
“Like taking an airplane out of Macau?”
“I certainly wasn’t going to buy a train ticket to Beijing.”
“The idea is starting to bounce around, Inspector, that you aren’t on our side, that you are on the wrong side, in fact. That’s not good.” Kim walked over to a large cabinet and turned a switch on the side. “You’re not bothered by white noise, I trust. Now no one will hear our conversation. I hope you don’t have a transmitter in your shoe or anything.”
“I did, but it gave me bunions, so I threw it away.”
“Here’s your dilemma. You don’t mind if I speak frankly?”
“I wish you would.”
“This place,” he looked around the room, but it was clear he meant the gesture to be interpreted more broadly, “is gone. Frankly, all that holds it up is the fear in my capital that a collapse will be disastrous for us. Believe me, people are shaking in their Guccis.”
“I think you’re wrong. A bigger real dilemma is that if you move too soon, or the wrong way, the Chinese won’t sit still.”
“Thank you for your advice, Inspector, but I read the same file you did. We’re handling the Chinese, and we don’t have any new openings for policy advisors. I’ll tell you if we do.”
“Money, that’s your problem. It makes your world go round. You’re afraid of making history for fear of losing money. Here, we rely on power. So why would people with power in this city agree to fall into your lap? Purely for money? I find that hard to believe. This group has no desire to spend the rest of its days on the Riviera.”
“Not money, Inspector, loss of nerve. It happens-not often, but it happens. That’s all it takes. Someone wakes up one morning, looks in the mirror, and can’t see anything familiar. It’s contagious. The result is extreme loss of self-confidence on a grand scale. I think it might be connected with the same gene that causes animals to stampede.”
“No, that gene doesn’t exist here. Maybe somewhere else. India, for example. Not here.”
“You don’t think so? You don’t think the whole structure could crack, from basement to penthouse? The whole rotten lie? It was a lie, O; you know that. You always knew that.”
“You’re going to find this hard to understand, Kim, but it wasn’t a lie. That word can’t cover how tens of millions of people lived their lives for nearly seventy years. We had something to believe in, a way to order existence. Maybe people didn’t have much, most of them had very little, but for practically all of those years they felt they belonged to something. Not so long ago, we used to be friendly to each other; young people stood up and gave their seats to the elderly. There was a simplicity in who we thought we were. We even had hope for the future.”
“That’s what innocence is, Inspector, hope.”
“You southerners lost it along the way, and now we have, too.”
Kim looked about to say something but changed his mind. He gestured for me to continue.
“You think your skirts are clean, rid of the camps you used to have. But I notice you’re not rushing to close the ones up here. Too complicated, you think. You’d rather draw up a list of particulars, crimes against humanity after the fact. Maybe you already have. Maybe that’s one of the lists on your desk.”
“And you, Inspector? How did you fit into this idyllic society?”
“I lived according to the prevailing myth, that’s all. Everyone lives by myths. Prettied up, they’re called truths-basic truths, natural truths, self-evident truths.” None of this sociopolitical pabulum was worth a damn. All that mattered was that I was not going to give Kim the pleasure of seeing me admit that my entire existence had been wrong. Never in a thousand years, I thought to myself-not now, not ever-will you see me grovel. “What I knew or thought a year ago is beside the point. The problem is today. Even if the past was a lie, what am I supposed to replace it with? Another lie? All that’s necessary is to pull the old one out and put a new one in, like a circuit board? Your lies have more diodes. I suppose they work faster, more color and noise.”
“What you replace your empty past with, Inspector, is your business. I’m giving you something different. I’m giving you a choice. Think about it. You choose, and that becomes your fate. Whatever years you have left, it’s all in your hands. Can you handle that? Can you make a decision on your own, without someone telling you which way to go?”
Kang had wanted me to choose. Now Kim wanted the same thing, only he couldn’t help being nasty about it. People who know the truth are that way. “And what if I don’t want to make a choice?”
“Dead. Very simply, dead. We’ll shoot you. In fact, I’ll do it myself. We’ll make it something dramatic, something that will send a message to the others. ‘What a waste,’ they’ll say as they cluck their tongues. ‘O had a choice to live, and he chose to die. Too bad.’ ”
“Maybe that will turn out to be your worst nightmare. What if I end up being a martyr?”
Kim’s smile told me the thought had already occurred to him. “You aren’t martyr material, Inspector. You have no cause; no one will rally around anything you have ever said, or been, or imagined. It will be as if you stepped off a cliff for no reason.”
“I could choose to go back to my mountain, fade away, not cause you any trouble. What’s wrong with that?”
“Not possible. We can’t have you on the fence. It would be a bad precedent, and we’re dealing with a period right now when setting precedent takes priority over normal considerations of right and wrong. I may not accomplish much in the next couple of months, but one thing I will get done and that is to establish precedents.”
“So you’d rather eliminate me. Nothing personal, simply setting precedent.”
“Look, O, here’s a list.” He pulled a paper from the folder. “See the names with the check marks next to them? They’re with us.”
“The familiar name list. I’m not on it, I hope. It seems an unstable place to be. You keep fiddling with the order. These are the ones you’re propping up, I assume.” I glanced at the list. Nobody I’d want to have drinks with. “You don’t pick your friends all that carefully as far as I can see.”
