The driver of the black car must have taken his foot off the gas. The blue car pulled ahead suddenly, and as it came abreast of us, there was a muffled explosion, the road heaved into the air, and the car careened into the field across the way. The second car braked sharply and stopped just before the crater left by the explosion. The passenger side door opened; a man got out and ran to the driver's side of the blue car. He looked in the window, pulled a small machine pistol from under his jacket, and fired a burst into the car. He looked again, then fired another. As he ran back to the black car, he stopped and looked up the hill. He had short-cropped hair. I couldn't see his eyes, but I knew they were like knives.
The black car drove on the dirt shoulder for a few yards, crushing the wildflowers. Once it eased back onto the highway, the driver accelerated so rapidly he fishtailed across the road, then regained control and moved north again. Just as the car disappeared over a small rise, I heard the horn blare. Li was shaking; I couldn't tell whether it was with fear or with anger. "He wanted you to see that, Inspector. And he wanted me to see it, too. It's a warning: If we get in his way, we're dead men, for sure."
6
"You hungry yet, Inspector?"
"It was your satellite dish, must have been. Your people were watching that highway. Or someone working for you. That radio scanner, in the black car the first time, it was yours, too?"
"Told you, I'm only a note taker. Mind if I fix a sandwich?" He walked into the kitchen and turned on the light. "Could make you a cup of tea-Irish tea, if you don't mind."
"I've had coffee already." I heard him grunt in disappointment. "Okay, I'll try the tea."
"I thought you liked tea."
"Lost my taste for it, I guess."
"Cream?"
"Cream! Are you kidding? How about whiskey? I thought that was how you people drank tea." I followed him to the kitchen.
"Some do. Not me. Cream and sugar." He turned to watch me for a moment, just long enough to make sure I'd stopped at the kitchen door.
"Only a habit, drinking tea like that, but it reminds me of home. You ever get lonely, Inspector, on the road?"
"Wouldn't you like to know. If I did, it would take a lot of loneliness for me to drink tea with cream and sugar." I took the cup from him and looked around the edge.
"No cranes, sorry."
"Tell me, Richie, why were your people watching the highway? Is that when I wandered into your sights? Were you expecting Kang to be out there?"
The Irishman cleaned the counter, washed his cup, and wiped the faucets and then the cupboard handles. "Three questions, for which you already realize you won't get answers. But you know what Kang was doing back there in Pak's office, don't you. He wanted to find out how much Kim knew. And, if Kang was operating true to form, he also wanted a good look at you. He'd been checking up, he told you that. But Kang doesn't trust paper or other people's reports. He wanted to see you for himself."
I gave a mock salute. "I am impressed. You are obviously thorough, a trait too often overlooked. You've been watching Kang awhile, I take it."
"Not long enough. We didn't know about Kim, but we knew Kang was worried. He was jumping around, moving his people and collecting his cash, folding up networks. We couldn't figure it out, until we got wind of this Japanese thing. Someone told me it looked like Kang was scared.
Didn't sound right to me."
"Kang wouldn't panic. He lacked that gene. Up in Manpo, he told me the deal with Japan was about to cause trouble internally. Do you know what he meant? Had you already figured out what he was doing on the border?"
"Let's just say we knew that a settlement between your country and Japan after all these years strikes a lot of people as inconvenient."
"They shouldn't worry."
"Oh?"
"Richie, compared with relations between my country and Japan, the Irish have a love affair with England. South Koreans, Chinese, Indonesians-no one likes the Japanese and no one ever will. I don't know why. Pak and I would talk about it sometimes. Pak said it was irrational."
"What happened to Pak? You said he's dead. How?"
"Ask Kim."
"Be serious." His phone rang; he answered it quickly. "I think so." He hung up. "You want to keep going?" He looked at his notebook, then frowned at the tape recorder. It had been running the whole time. "You had just seen a couple of cars."
7
"Military Security mined the highway." I had run up the stairs and was out of breath, standing in the doorway to Pak's office. "They blew up a car, and Kim shot the driver in cold blood. He must have told Li to bring me out there to watch. The guy's a fucking sadist." Pak was looking at me curiously from behind his desk. I never run up the stairs.
"This is Kang's business, not ours. Remember, I told you this wasn't my job, I told you when this whole thing started. It has something to do with that black car I was supposed to photograph. This time it was blue. Get Kang on the phone."
"Let's go to your office, Inspector." He looked out his window at the Operations Building. "The view is better."
When we got to my office, Pak pointed at my desk. "Inspector, sit down, shut up, and listen to yourself. Call Kang? You want me to use the telephone in the middle of this?" He picked up my phone and yanked the wire from the wall. If the phones were bugged, they would transmit even when they were hung up. We unplugged them from the wall receptacle on the rare occasions we didn't want to risk being monitored.
Yanking the wire from the wall was not the preferred method, but it did the job. "That's much better."
"What's wrong with your office?"
"I think someone is keeping an eye on us, and maybe an ear, from the Operations Building. I just noticed it a day or so ago. Curtains moving in odd ways."
"They've been watching me, too."
"Kang and I are having lunch today, remember? You can join us.
Make jolly at the noodle place. Lots of laughs. Afterward, we can go up to the monuments by the river to talk. A couple of drunken cadre going to snooze on the grass. They can't get in too close, unless they've decided it's time to throw a net on us."
"This is no time for a picnic. Something is about to happen, and for all I know it's going to happen today. You already know what it is, don't you? You knew even before you sent me up to Manpo."
"I don't know what I don't know, Inspector." Pak was staring out my window. "Do you think Li really understands what is going on?" He didn't sound like he was interested in the answer; his attention was still completely riveted on the street.
"He must have. He looked at his watch; he knew the schedule. I think he's known for a long time something was going on. They had to bring the local security man in on it, at least enough to make sure the road was clear each time one of those cars came up the road. Something happened last month, though. Too many cars, on the wrong days. Li is quiet, but he's smart. He must have figured it out. Maybe he said something to Kim. Maybe he told Kim to find another highway, it was too dangerous for the locals. To keep him quiet, they killed his sister's son."
Pak whirled around. "The boy who had his throat cut?" He closed his eyes and put his hand on the wall to steady himself. "Enough," he said softly, and turned back to the window. "Enough."
"I don't think Li knew exactly what was going to happen when he told me to come out there. He seemed nervous, not like himself, but that could have been because he was planning to tell me something he had been told to keep secret. And he knew what happens when you cross Military Security. But they overreached if they thought they'd keep him quiet by killing the boy." I waited for Pak to say something, but he didn't. "You alright?" I asked.