The fields gave way to hilly wasteland, and coming around a curve I passed a young girl walking alone on a deserted stretch of road. She held a dainty white sun-parasol over her head and had a white bag purse slung over her shoulder. What really caught my eye was her blouse.
Crisp and new, but most of all red. Bright, bold red. She looked straight ahead, her free arm swinging at her side. I watched her in the rearview mirror for as long as I could. Where was she going all by herself, wearing a red blouse in the middle of nowhere? I almost stopped to offer a ride, but on second thought I decided she was one of those cranes on the celadon vase. Lifting in flight, going nowhere.
When I pulled across the tracks onto the final short stretch of road that led along the river to the hotel, the moon was rising, pale and brimming with the sorrow of early evening. The sight of the hotel did nothing to cheer me up. The last time I was here, I had seen it only during the day. In the sunlight, even if you weren't crazy about buildings that looked like wedding cakes, you could see that some effort had been made to fit the hotel into the landscape. At dusk, it looked like a spaceship that had wandered off course, or a big white bug feeding at the foot of the hills.
The lobby was almost dark and seemed deserted. As I stepped inside, I spotted two people sitting on a sofa against the far wall. When she saw me, Lena lit a cigarette and looked away. Song, the singing security man, started, muttered something, and then disappeared through a doorway marked no entrance. The front desk looked unmanned, so I wandered over to the sofa. "Shocked to see me?"
"Not half as shocked as you are to see me." She blew some smoke off to the side. "There aren't any no-smoking rooms here, but the twelfth floor has a good view." She'd been drinking, enough so that she slurred a word here and there.
"So does the fifteenth floor, I hear." I sat down next to her. "Out of your neighborhood, aren't you?"
"My papers are in order, if that's what is worrying you."
"I'll bet they are."
"I'm glad to see you." She patted my hand. "Really I am." For some reason she switched to Chinese; maybe it was because knitting reminded her of her mother. "I hope the sweater fit."
I realized I had never even tried it on, but I knew enough not to say so. "Did you have dinner yet?"
"Still good at changing the subject, I see. Yes, I ate. They serve early.
The dining room has closed." She looked at her watch. "And I must get to the bar upstairs in a minute, before it opens." She put out her cigarette slowly and then turned to me. "Tomorrow is promised as good weather."
Maybe I was tired, or maybe it was her perfume, but it took me half a second too long to realize what she meant. By then, she was at the elevator.
There was a laugh from a chair hidden in the shadows behind a potted plant. The desk clerk emerged and moved behind the counter.
When Lena stepped into the elevator and the doors closed after her, he laughed again. "You better fix that timing, friend, or you're going to be one lonely inspector. The rules are you must, I emphasize must, have a reservation to get a room, but what I just saw was so pathetic, I'm willing to bend them. Lucky for you we have a room or two left. Breakfast starts at seven. Tell me now or you don't eat." He handed me a key: 1504.
I dangled it in front of his face. "How about another floor?"
"Can't. We're full and you don't, I emphasize don't, have a reservation.
When we're full, we use the fifteenth. Great views." He gave me a sly look. "Don't worry, the window won't swing open in this room. The bastards soldered them shut."
The floor mat in the elevator said it was Wednesday. Either they were two days late changing it, or they wanted to get a good jump on next week. The hallway on the fifteenth floor was pitch-black. The only way to find my room was by counting doorknobs. When I rattled the knob on what I assumed was 1502, I heard the safety clicked off a pistol.
I didn't bother to apologize. At the fourth knob I opened the door, half expecting Kim to be sitting on the bed. Or Kang. The room was empty. Maybe they didn't know where I was. One of them would by tomorrow. Someone roaming through the parking lot would see my plates and phone them in. I thought about walking up to the temple in the moonlight but remembered the climb and fell asleep instead.
The knock on the door at four in the morning woke me. Something about that hour attracts hall walkers. I knew it wouldn't be Kim. He wouldn't knock, not after what happened during our last meeting. It was the local guy, Song. He looked uneasy as he opened the door, stepped in, and turned on the light. "Master key." He held it up for me to see.
"Good morning."
"I put new plates on your car, from Hamhung. Now it's part of the Hamhung group that's here to see the Friendship Exhibit, though there aren't many of those Volvos left. Sort of stands out. I don't really know if there are any in Hamhung, but no one's going to check right away. Too much trouble." He massaged his shoulder. "Don't thank me. It's my job."
"Did you have something else?"
"Kang was here, but he left all of a sudden. He said you'd know what to do."
"That's it?"
"Yeah. If I were you, I wouldn't stick around here, Inspector. The Military Security team down the hall is restless. They're packing their equipment. Somebody's coming up from Pyongyang tomorrow night to pick them up."
"Kim?"
"I don't know. I'll be glad when they're gone. And you with them."
"Any more cars with girls come up here?"
"I wouldn't know what you are talking about. Your old plates are in the trunk. Along with that gas can."
"How much gas did you take?" As I got out of the bed, he backed toward the door.
"Don't worry, you've got enough left."
"Anything else?"
"Yeah, I'd do something about that rear tire. That's what I'd do."
2
In the morning I went down to the front desk and asked the clerk to give Lena a message.
"She's in 614. Deliver it yourself if you want."
"I don't. I want you to give it to her." I handed him a sheet of stationery that had been in the room. There were no envelopes, so I folded it in thirds and then tucked in the edges. I didn't write anything. I figured the blue button I'd found on the floor in the closet in the Koryo would be enough.
3
The pine needles made a soft bed on the slope of the hill facing the temple. No one could see anything from below; the spot was screened by wild azaleas and a grove of scrub pine trees. Lena had circled around and approached me from behind. I heard her footsteps, but not until the perfume reached me did I turn to look at her.
She had on the same long skirt and the white blouse she'd been wearing the night I first saw her. The blue buttons were even brighter in the sun, but mostly it was her eyes that took the light.
"We missed our picnic last time," I said. "I thought we could try it here."
"If I'd known, I would have brought something." She was speaking Chinese, and I was never able to read much emotion drifting in the tones of that language.
"I have the black bread and blueberry jam." She didn't look amused, and I began to worry that the whole thing was a mistake.
"A small joke," I said. "Sorry. I did bring some rice cakes from the hotel and a couple of apples. They're tart this time of year."
"I see you have a bottle of beer, too. Do you have any glasses, by any chance?"
"No. We'll have to drink out of the bottle. Not so elegant, I guess.
Next time I'll bring some cups that I made a few years ago, out of persimmon wood. Liquor takes on the flavor. So does tea. Do you like persimmon?"