"Have there been many changes around here since the Presidential Palace explosion?"
"You may have noticed a few people smiling," Pak said in a droll voice. "That's new."
"Are the secret police still around?"
"Oh, yes. The State Political Security Department is still in buisness, but even some of them smile now. They act as if they had been doers of good deeds for the past forty years."
Yun thought of Kim Chi-yon, his escort from yesterday, and his effusive greeting. "I haven't seen very many cars," the Captain said. "You must be lucky to have one."
"Around here, luck is a five-letter word called 'Party.' I've been a member for years. Not that I believed in what it did or stood for, but because it offered the only possibility for getting ahead. If there was any luck involved, it was that my father happened to be a brilliant chemist. He invented some processes necessary for our industrial growth. So rather than blacklist him because his brother had fled south, they 'rehabilitated' him and allowed him to join the Party."
"That paved the way for you?"
"Right, I'm an administrator in the Pyongyang Public Security Bureau. We're under the Ministry of Public Security. 'The mighty weapon of the proletarian dictatorship of the Party' is how one minister described it. The reason I'm free this morning, I have to make an inspection at a suburban police station. Fortunately, it's on the same side of town as your man."
Yun found Pak's position an interesting one. One that might make him privvy to a little insider information. "Did the security people ever determine who was to blame for the bombing last September?"
"Somebody is always assigned the blame in a society like this. It may not be the correct party, but they'll blame everything on somebody. In this case, it was determined that the explosive had been planted inside a Ming vase sent by the Chinese government."
"Did they blame the Chinese?"
"Not the government. A vice premier of the People's Republic was killed as he presented the vase. He wasn't a person they would have sacrificed. Anyway, China had more to gain with Kim alive. So they blamed it on a dissident Chinese faction. Some people still believe the regime in Seoul was behind it."
"Really? I'm afraid they give us more credit than we deserve," said Captain Yun.
"There was no way to prove it," said Pak. "They found enough fragments to indicate the bomb was set off by a radio-controlled detonator. But not big enough pieces to tell where it came from. It was the way the Kwak government moved so quickly with a unification plan that made people suspicious. It appeared they had everything set and were just waiting for the bomb to go off."
Yun shrugged. "Every government for the past forty years has had some kind of plan ready to implement unification. I'm not saying we wouldn't have been delighted to plant a bomb under old Kim. I just can't believe we had the resources to pull it off."
For the moment, he dismissed the thought as Pak carried on a tour guide's commentary while they traveled to the far side of Pyongyang. Chung's home was in a somewhat better section than the one Yun had visited the previous day. The house was large enough to accommodate the old soldier along with his son and family, including a wife and three children. He had been closer to his partisan commander than Yoon Kwang-su and had retired from a decent government job.
Pak let Captain Yun out of the car and said he would make his police station inspection and be back in two hours.
Yun found the former guerrilla a garrulous old man with a high forehead, close-cropped gray hair and the acid tongue of a dogmatic village elder. He wore a white wool vest and smoked a long-stemmed pipe, which he used occasionally to emphasize his points.
"Yes, sir," he said forcefully enough to leave no doubt, "I'm the fellow who sent that information to your Dr. Lee. What do you want to know about it?"
As Captain Yun soon learned, Chung had kept silent until after Kim Il-sung's death for very good reasons. Had he exposed the man in the south earlier, the former Young Tiger Lee would likely have come back with details that contradicted the story Kim had stuck to all these years. Details that would have diminished the lofty role in the war the North Korean leader had claimed for himself. That would have led to a very unhappy and unforgiving dictator whose reputation for ruthlessness would have assured the end of Chung Wu-keun. Kim had long since eliminated most of those who might pose a threat by their knowledge of that early chapter in his career as a Marxist.
After more than two hours of listening to Chung's fascinating tale, Yun Yu-sop knew with virtual certainty the identity of the so-called Young Tiger. Chung had learned about the Poksu guerilla band after the war and had concluded, based on dates, locations and descriptions, particularly identities of the two killed by the Japanese at Taejon, that it was undoubtedly the group of four men Lee had led back across the Yalu River in 1941. And for the clincher, Yun possessed the name of Lee's friend, who Chung had just recently discovered was currently living in Thailand. It took the Captain a good fifteen minutes of his most persuasive manner to pry the old guerilla loose from a dark, brittle photograph of a group of partisans that included Young Tiger Lee and his compatriot, Ahn Wi-jong. Chung had sent all of his other photographs to Dr. Lee. They had been taken, of course, along with the manuscript, by the historian's murderer.
Captain Yun had been so engrossed in the colorful old partisan's descriptions that he hadn't bothered to take note of what was occurring outside the house. When Pak returned, he stepped through the door to find himself facing a sea of white, with roofs, streets, cars, everything covered by a good three inches of snow. The large crystalline flakes continued to swirl down in a massive shower that left visibility reduced to hardly fifty meters.
This was the first big snowfall of the winter in Pyongyang, and the speed with which it accumulated caught everyone by surprise. The street and highway maintenance crews, whose responsibility included snow removal, were among the victims of the current confusion and disorganization in government, a situation that had brought calamity to a city once regarded as one of the best managed in Asia. Traffic throughout Pyongyang, sparse though it was, slowed almost to a halt. Pak did his best. When one artery would appear hopelessly clogged, he would spin around and try another. Nevertheless, they spent what seemed an agonizing half an afternoon standing in lines of stalled vehicles. It was nearly four by the time they reached Yun's hotel.
He shielded the envelope with the old photograph beneath his heavy coat as he stepped gingerly through the crusty layer of snow, which now came halfway up the calf of his leg. No one had bothered to shovel off the sidewalk in front of the hotel. He wondered if the bewildered authorities simply hadn't found time to decide whose responsibility it was.
Inside the lobby, he stopped to brush off his coat before heading for the elevators. As he glanced toward the registration desk, he caught the profile of a man talking to the clerk. He did a double-take. His heart virtually ceased to beat.
With great difficulty, he wrenched his head away to keep from being caught staring. It was like a sense of deja vu. He had never laid eyes on the man before, but he had studied that face with the mustache far too many times to mistake it now. It was as though he were looking at one of those close-up photos Burke Hill had given him. The man at the desk was Suh Tae-hung, alias Hwang Sang-sol, a.k.a. countless other identities.
Yun spotted one of his fellow policemen, a man named Kang who had been assigned to the Namdaemun Station a few years back, and quickly crossed the lobby toward him. Now his heart pounded wildly. He muttered a greeting to the officer, shifting his position to afford a better view of the desk. He took a deep breath and silently began to berate himself. Hwang obviously didn't know he was the man who had been asking all the questions. Otherwise, he would have encountered the assassin long before now. He scolded himself for acting like a schoolboy frightened by a neighborhood bully. It was beneath the dignity of a competent, highly-trained professional of the Korean National Police.