“I didn’t leave because I wanted to, you may recall. It wasn’t my choice to stay away so long.”
“It never struck me that you were someone who was too particular about borders, or about your paymaster. Major Kim told me-”
Kang looked away. “Nothing Kim says matters.” He said this softly, like he had turned out the lights in a room he never wanted to see again.
“You know him pretty well, I take it.”
I waited, but nothing came back. The question simply dissolved in the space between us. “Let me guess. You had a joint operation, but it didn’t go well. And now you’re working against him.”
“I’ll say this only once. Never believe anything he tells you. Nothing. Ever.”
“My grandfather was suspicious of oak trees. He said that they were too complex to be trusted.” I thought about it. “And me? You believe anything I say? I’m not all that complex, really. You’ve been watching me; you should know that much.”
“For the moment, I believe whatever it is that keeps me alive. That should be your credo, too.”
“I don’t need it. I’ll find something else. Maybe something halfway in between.”
“A piece of advice, Inspector-stay out of the middle. In times like this, it is the middle that gets crushed. When this is finally over, the countryside will be littered with the corpses of people who chose too late.”
“You’re about to give me a choice, is that it? Don’t bother. I don’t join and I don’t jump. I don’t know if that’s my fate or my upbringing. If you have doubts about me, don’t. I’m not with Kim, and I’m not scared of him.”
“Here.” Kang handed me a napkin to put against the cut. “Take this in case you finally decide it’s worth getting out of the middle.” He stood up to go. “No sense bleeding to death right now.”
5
“Let’s suppose the Chinese moved in. Would that be so bad? It wouldn’t be the end of the world. You don’t want the Chinese here in large numbers, of course, or with their ponderous influence.”
“I don’t want them in any numbers, and neither do you.” Kang had helped me back to my hotel room. He was leaning against pressed wood.
“You also don’t want the South to take over.”
“Why should we? We’ll be treated like dirt for a generation. Look how long it took them to stop sneering at Cholla people.”
“Then what’s left?”
“We’ve been on our own for a long time. We can do better. We’re not completely stupid after all these years.” Kang had started down one road of thought, but I could see he changed his mind at the last minute. “You realize, Inspector, that this can’t have a happy ending. There is no clean solution. It’s over the edge of the cliff already.”
“Pity.” He must know about Li.
“I mean, especially for you. It can only end badly.”
“Compared to what?” I said. “If you’re trying to scare me into jumping in line behind you, forget it. I told you: I don’t jump; I don’t join. That’s probably why I survived on the mountain. The more I think about it, the more I realize I was lucky to be there.”
“The problem is, you might not be lucky forever. Life is a series of remembered tasks. What if you forget to inhale one day?”
“Don’t worry; I plan it out every morning when I wake up. So many breaths. So many heartbeats. So many trips to the bathroom. It’s too hard to dole out laughter daily, so I put it on a monthly ration. By the end of the month, people find me dour.”
Kang had a pistol in his belt. He put it on the desk. “What about surprise? What’s the quota for fear this month? Pain?”
“Overfulfilled. I’ve already borrowed against next month. I told you, if you’re trying to scare me, forget it.”
Kang moved to the window and looked outside. “This hotel. You like it?”
“It’s all right. You said so yourself.”
“I’d say you might want to consider moving to a new room. Even better, move out altogether; find a quieter place, something with a better character, maybe. It’s up to you, but that’s what I say.” He looked at the pistol, then at me. “You have something to protect yourself with in these troubled times?”
“My aura of invincibility.”
“Useful, but carry this when you go out from now on.” He took an extra clip out of his pocket. “If you use these up and need more, it means you’re out of luck, so don’t bother looking around for the exit door. Keep one for yourself. I’ll be in touch.” He stepped into the hall and, from the sound of another door slamming shut, took the stairs.
I didn’t have a suitcase, but I also didn’t have much in the way of clothes, so I put everything in the laundry bag. There was no sense checking out, since Kim, or at least his accounting department, was paying the bill. Downstairs, the bird clerk looked up as I walked by.
“It’s no problem for us to do the laundry,” she said. “Just dial six.”
“I thought six was room service.”
She held up one finger.
“Never mind. I prefer to do the laundry myself. Go down to the river and beat it on the rocks, that’s how we washed our things in the old days.”
“There are no rocks.”
“No? That’s progress. Every damn river in the country is filled with rocks except this one.” I smiled at her. She wasn’t bad looking when you saw her in the afternoon light. “Say, don’t I know you from up in Rajin? Didn’t you used to sing at the casino?”
“Me? I’ve never been up there.” She seemed pleased.
I hoisted the bag over my shoulder. “I’ve always done my own laundry.”
“You kidding me?”
“Sure, it’s how we did things. My grandfather, who you probably never heard of, said he hadn’t spent all that time in the forest fighting Japs just to make sure someone else would wash his shorts.”
“He said that? What about your mother?”
“She died in the war.”
“Oh.” The clerk looked serious. “You shouldn’t call them Japs.”
“Pardon me?”
“Japs. You shouldn’t say that. We get Japanese tourists these days, older ones, not many, but more and more. They like to come and look around at places they used to live, where they went to school, that sort of thing. We’re not supposed to offend them.”
A car, two cars roared into the parking lot. A lot of doors slammed all at once.
“You’d better get back here.” The clerk opened a door behind the counter. I moved quickly to see what she meant. There was a small space and what looked like a passageway, though it was too dark to see where it led. “Do it!” she hissed. “Now!”
I disappeared inside, and the door shut behind me.
“You can’t go up there,” I heard the clerk say.
“The hell we can’t.” A clatter of footsteps up the stairs. A few minutes later, footsteps coming down, not nearly as fast. “Where is he?” It was Major Kim’s voice. He was out of breath.
“I don’t know. He left a few minutes ago.”
“Where’d he go?”
