Bamboo and Blood (3 page)

The man who was sleeping yawned and opened his eyes at the sound. He glanced at me without interest. “Yeah, well, we’ll take custody now, so don’t worry about your parking spot.” He stood up and moved toward the foreigner.

“No one is going anywhere until I make a phone call.” Pak rarely balked at surrendering custody. There was something funny in his manner; it made me uneasy when he acted strange like this. “We’ve been tramping around in the snow for hours. I’ll be damned if the two of you will just take over after sitting here and napping all night. You want to play, find yourself some orders, and they better be written
orders,” he paused. “Pretend to be useful for a change instead of just pushing people around.” Pak picked up the phone, listened for a moment, then put it down again.

The two of them smiled together, as if one were a mirror image of the other. A moment later, the first one’s face fell back into anger. His mouth moved a few times, but nothing came out.

“Phones are down,” the second one said and yawned again. His overcoat had a nice fur-lined hood on it. “You know you can’t keep him, and you know why. So don’t be a dope.”

Pak pulled a clean sheet of paper out of a drawer and slapped it on his desk. I’d never seen him make such grand, noisy gestures. “There’s nothing that says I can’t keep him, and there’s nothing that says you get to take him. You’re in my office, this is a Ministry building, and I say nothing happens until I get something with an official stamp that tells me I don’t have jurisdiction. Meantime, go fuck yourself.”

They both looked at the foreigner. “He doesn’t move; he stays here. If he leaves this building, he’ll be sorry. If he talks to anyone on the phone, he’ll be sorry.” The first one had found his voice again. He turned to Pak. “And you’ll be sorry, comrade, believe me. Real sorry. We’re going now, but we’ll be back.” He picked up one of the cups and tossed it to me. “Wash these, why don’t you?”

They smiled again, in stereo, and slammed the door on their way out.

The foreigner applauded. “Bravo, bravo. A man of principle! I thought you said you were going to toss me into their jaws.”

I put down the cup and rubbed my ears. “Almost thawed out, but I still can’t believe what I just heard. Are you crazy?” I looked at Pak. “They’ll tear us limb from limb. Especially the ugly one.”

Pak shook his head. “I don’t like people helping themselves to my tea, and I don’t like them parking in my spot. Besides, they don’t scare me. I don’t care what they look like. It will take them a couple of hours to find the right person to supply written authorization. No one wants to commit anything to paper these days, too dangerous; there’s no paper trail if there’s no paper. Everyone wants everything verbal. Well, I don’t. I don’t have to take verbal orders from them, and they know it. Meantime, I’ll call the Minister, and we’ll figure out something else to
slow them down.” He turned to the foreigner. “You were under my care. You still are, as far as I’m concerned. I don’t sacrifice people under my care, it doesn’t matter how foolish they are.”

“Where does all this leave me, if you don’t mind my asking?” The foreigner did not look grateful or concerned. He sounded even less so.

“You?” Pak stared at the man for a moment. “Where does it leave you? You can go back to your hotel if you want. Pack your suitcase. Sit tight.”

“What if they come for me at the hotel?” Still no note of concern in the voice.

“No problem. The inspector here will look stern. He will be implacable until they back off and go home.”

“And if they don’t?”

Pak looked surprised. “Do I detect a note of worry? I wouldn’t have thought so, you getting worried. But if that’s the case, if you’d rather hide, you can stay here. We’ll dump you at the airport later this morning, and you take the next plane out.” He pointed at the calendar on the wall. “It’s Tuesday, you’re in luck. The plane leaves early, assuming they get the runway cleared and the ice off the wings.”

“What if things play out differently, not so propitiously? It’s not that I’m worried, just running down the options.”

“I’ll bet you have contingency plans.” Pak scratched his head. “
Deigeh nisht
, I think was the term you used. It’s Swiss, you said, for ‘never mind, it’s covered.’”

The foreigner laughed even before I finished translating. “You were so drunk that night, who could believe you would remember anything. But you did! Maybe my efforts here were not in vain.” He laughed again. “Look, I can get you honorary citizenship someday, if you need it. You and the inspector, both. Who knows, your Korean genes might like the beach, and a little oil, eh, Inspector?” He patted me on the shoulder. “Is there a bed in this place?”

Pak pointed down the hall. “No bed. You can sleep on a chair in the empty office. The bathroom is downstairs; there’s no lightbulb, so try to wait until the sun is up to use it. You need something to eat, but I don’t know where we can find anything right now. Maybe they have some food
at the airport. We’ll see what’s possible later this morning. You have your passport with you?”

“No.”

“It figures.” Pak turned to me. “Go get it before those stone heads think to collect the damned thing from the hotel.”

“The clerks won’t hand it over.” I didn’t bother getting up. “‘You lack authorization,’ they’ll say, if I can even rouse them at this hour of the morning. I may not even be able to get in the door. They lock it, and there’s no bell.”

“Be charming, Inspector.” The foreigner handed me a hundred-dollar bill. “Be very charming and give them this as authorization. It might even open the door.”

Pak grunted. “They might not take it…”

I put the bill in my pocket. “Though, then again, they might. Of course, as soon as they give me the passport, they’ll make a call to our grinning friends.” I stood up to go. “Incidentally, keep your honorary citizenship.” I looked at a notch at the top of the window frame and said very deliberately, “I don’t need it.”

“You know, O, you might have been a Jew.” The foreigner craned his neck at the corners of the ceiling and then settled his gaze on the top of the window, which was rattling in the wind. “You see Cossacks everywhere.”

Wednesday morning, the two men from the special section were back, carrying a piece of paper and accompanied by two other men, from where they wouldn’t say.

“What do you mean, he’s gone?” The ugly one growled and narrowed his eyes. “I told you, if he left this place, you’d be sorry.”

Pak tipped back in his chair. “Did you? I don’t remember that. Do you remember that, Inspector?” I was standing in the doorway.

“No. I don’t recall.”

The others turned to look at me. One of them licked his lips. “You,
of all people, O. It figures, our paths would cross again, someday.” I didn’t recognize the face, but his left hand was missing two fingers. He held it up for me to see.

Pak gave me a look, halfway between “You know him?” and “Let me handle this.” I leaned against the wall, a little out of sorts. The man with the left hand had died a long time ago. Fifteen years, maybe more. I remembered the day precisely. I just couldn’t recall the year.

“Where is he?” The ugly one turned back to Pak. “And don’t say you don’t know.”

“I don’t know.” Pak took a nail clipper from his drawer. He clipped the nails on his left hand, and put the parings in a neat little pile on the desk. No one spoke. This is what it is like inside an atomic bomb, I thought to myself. In the millisecond before it blows everything to hell.

Finally, the fourth man laughed. “When we’re through with you, you’ll be lucky to have anything left to clip.” He was taller than the others, older. “But I don’t want to get ahead of myself. So, I’ll give you another chance. Where is the foreigner?”

Pak swept the parings into a trashcan beside the desk before looking up. “He’s gone. I assume he took the flight out of here back to Beijing. From there, your guess is as good as mine.”

“You decided, on your own, not to hold him?” The tall man looked around the office. “Since when do shitty little policemen make decisions about national security matters? Beyond your writ, wouldn’t you say?”

“He had a valid passport, a valid visa, a valid residency stamp, and an airline ticket that didn’t look like it had been forged.” Pak counted on his fingers as he listed each piece of evidence. “As far as I know, he went through the immigration line, looked at the officer in the booth, you know, the girl with the lips like roses in bloom, and was passed. No one said boo. You had a lookout for him, did you?”

“We had reason to hold him. You let him slip away. Tell me why.”

The man with the left hand hadn’t taken his eyes off me. There was no expression in them, but you wouldn’t call it a blank look. I felt pinned to the wall, like a bug. Alright, so he didn’t die fifteen years ago. Good for him. He nodded for me to step outside.

We went down the stairs without speaking. When we got outside, he kept walking to the front gate. The guards looked at him and then at me. I shrugged and followed him to the street. Finally, he stopped and turned around. “If I shot you right here, do you think anyone would mind?”

“Nice to see you, too.”

He lit a cigarette. “You still don’t smoke, I assume. No problems of conscience. Just left me for dead and danced home. I wondered what I’d say if I ever saw you again.”

“What did you decide?”

“I forget.” He threw away the cigarette. “You didn’t even look surprised when you saw me.”

“It crossed my mind.” I started to walk. “Let’s keep moving.”

He fell in alongside, but didn’t say anything.

“Where have you been in the meantime? We’d have run into each other sooner if you’d been in-country.”

“Here and there. It took a few years to recover. Pretty good job, the way they put me together again. Good doctors. Very dedicated.” He held up his hand. “Too bad I’m left-handed.”

“Must make it hard to count.”

He stopped. “I think I’ll use two bullets. The first one so that it hurts, really bad. And the second one, so it hurts even more.” He paused. “I can still count to two.”

“You should be able to make it to three, but you’re not even armed, so maybe we can skip through the tough talk.” He’d lit another cigarette; his good hand was shaking a little, not much. “What did your crowd want with the foreigner?”

“Doesn’t concern you.” The smoke from the cigarette drifted slowly out of his mouth, as if he weren’t breathing. “I’ll tell you this, though. There’s going to be hell to pay that he got out of the country. You know where he’s from?”

“He says he’s Swiss.” That was true, as far as it went.

“You believe him? He’s not Swiss. His mother is a Hungarian, that’s why he has a Hungarian name. What did you think Jenö was?”

Actually, I’d checked that with the name trace section. I put in the request on a Wednesday morning, the day after our foreigner arrived. When nothing was back by Friday, I called. Real simple, they said. It’s Italian. “You sure about that? His papers say he’s Swiss.” Don’t worry, they said. We know names; it’s Italian.

“So, maybe his father is Swiss.” I avoided looking at the man’s hand and concentrated on his face. There was nothing in it I recognized.

“His father was Israeli.”

“Was.”

“Dead.”

“Is that so? You seem to know quite a bit.”

“You’d be surprised.” He threw away the second cigarette. “Let me ask you a question. Nothing complicated. Why’d you let him go?”

“We had our orders to be nice, show him around, keep him comfortable. Ending up in one of your holes didn’t match the description. Anyway, he hadn’t done anything wrong.”

“Not in your book.”

“Not in my book.” I stepped off the curb. “You hungry? I’ll buy you lunch.” There hadn’t been food for lunch for a long time, but we still made the offer sometimes, out of habit.

“No, thanks.” He turned around and started walking back toward the gate. “I’d rather choke.”

Pak didn’t look up when I stepped into his office. “We’re in a lot of trouble, but you know that. Where you been?”

“I spent some time thinking about noodles. Then I did some walking around. I wanted to clear my head, that sort of thing. Another cold day, we’re due for a little break, wouldn’t you think? Not that I mind. Cold is good for clearing my head.” The cold did nothing for my head besides making my ears ache. Pak knew I was only throwing up chaff in hopes of avoiding the question he was sure to ask.

He asked it. “You know that guy with three fingers?”

“Two fingers, actually; the other one is a thumb. Yes, I do.” I sat
down and looked out the only window in Pak’s office. The view wasn’t much, an inner courtyard and, across the way, the Operations Building. It was snowing again, though just a few flakes. Maybe if it snowed more it would warm up a degree or two. My ears still burned from being outside without a hat. This sort of cold gave me an awful headache. “We used to work together.”

Pak said nothing, but he didn’t go to sleep, either.

“He was in an accident.” I didn’t think that would end the conversation. It didn’t.

“And?”

“And it was a bad accident.”

“And?” Pak was going to pull at this, no matter what. He was in that sort of mood.

“The man died. But apparently he didn’t.”

“To review: You worked together. Somewhere, not to be discussed, he was in a bad accident that killed him, but didn’t. And you haven’t seen each other since then. Shall I guess the rest, or are you going to tell me? Normally, I wouldn’t ask, but this nondead friend of yours seems intent on causing us grief. He was standing in my office this morning, and as far as I’m concerned, that means he has crossed the line from the unmentionable past to a place where none of us want to be—the present. Where was this operation you two were conducting?”