James Church - The Man with the Baltic Stare

“The most immediate of your concerns is simply how to stay alive.” The focus dissolved from his eyes. “I don’t mean right now. You’re in no danger at the moment. But next month, next year.” He sighed. “Who can tell, the times are so unstable. In such times, we need to be under-”

The car swerved violently to the left. I was thrown against the door, but Zhao didn’t move.

“You see, Inspector? This is exactly what I was saying. In unstable times, you need something secure, something you can hold on to.”

“And why do you think the times are unstable?” They must have removed the seat belt on my side, because I couldn’t find it. “Maybe there’s nothing wrong with the times.”

“Yes, that’s right. Exactly right. As usual, you’re on the mark. That’s what people have told me: ‘Inspector O is a man who can see through the fog.’ Can you actually do that?”

“Fog is not a problem.”

“No? And what is?”

“Bullshit is the problem. You’re wasting my time, Zhao. Get to the point.” I didn’t think I wanted him as a lifelong friend, so there wasn’t much to lose by being blunt. He wanted to scare me, rough me up mentally. So far, it wasn’t working.

Zhao’s lids dropped, and for a moment I thought he was dying. Sleek and dangerous one moment, dying the next. Not all that unusual, especially for a gangster. He opened his eyes again slowly. “You plan to go to Macau. I don’t think that is wise.”

“Not wise.”

“What happens in Macau isn’t your business.”

“Everyone seems to have a great deal of interest in this trip. Major Kim thinks it quite important that I go. So does Colonel Pang, as a matter of fact.” That was not strictly true, but it seemed to me that Zhao wasn’t a stickler for honesty. He and Pang apparently didn’t get along; I needed to know exactly how bad their relations were. It took less than a heartbeat to find out.

“If I were you, I would stay as far away from that bastard Pang as I possibly could. People like him are a deadly disease, and you don’t want to catch it.”

“Anything else? I like my advice in a big bag so I can keep it all in one place. When advice comes in dribs and drabs, it can get mislaid, you know what I mean?”

“Here’s something for your bag, then.” The window on my side opened. “Take a good look, Inspector. This is my territory now.”

“What is it about you people? This is not your country. It’s not yours, never has been, never will be-not now, not ever.”

Zhao cocked his head, the first sign I had that he was really paying attention. “Down, boy, I said ‘territory,’ not ‘country.’ I don’t need your ragtag nation. But I’m serious about my territory. What’s mine is mine. Do I make myself clear? And no one takes it away from me. Not Pang, not your brothers in the South. And especially not you.”

Something clicked. “You and Kim share a dangerous misconception. You both think my ragtag nation has already collapsed. You seem to think you can move in at this point to bite chunks off the carcass.”

“I don’t think.” Zhao lit a cigarette. His eyes reflected the glow. They became yellow and luminous, bright spotlights in the black. “Thinking is all about assumptions, and perceptions, and convictions. To think is to assume rationality, and that can be very fatal. I act on instinct.” Again, the panther, outwardly in repose, his head resting against the back of the seat, but every muscle alert, every nerve primed. “Yes, your country is a corpse. And you only have a few weeks, maybe a month, to decide whether to die with it or to get away. I can give you a comfortable new existence, a new life. I have money, friends, a place where you can enjoy life for the years you have left.”

“And what should I do to earn this reward of rebirth?”

“Do nothing, nothing at all. It’s an ancient principle, Taoist, not exactly in its pure form, of course. I have adapted it slightly. But the core remains intact.”

“The essence of the concept is effortlessness, Zhao, not ‘do nothing.’ Give oneself up to the flow of the universe, become in perfect harmony with Righteousness. That is not ‘nothing,’ but everything.”

“No!” He sat up suddenly. I saw the driver wince and turn his head, which told me that the conversation was being piped into the front. It also told me that the driver was missing part of his left ear. “No! I’m not going to get into a philosophical duel with you. I’ve given you a choice. Get out of my way or get run over. That’s it. That’s your choice. At the moment you’re in my way. Very much in my way.”

“I’ll take my chances.” The panther didn’t want me to go to Macau. That made it simple. I was going.

The car pulled over. The door opened and the little man leaned inside. “Out,” he said. “Now.”

“You should learn to speak in complete sentences,” I said to him before he climbed into the front seat and slammed the door. I waved, but as far as I could tell, no one waved back.

That evening, Colonel Pang met me near the Taedong River. He left a message at the front desk that he would be across from the monument at dusk and that perhaps we should try getting acquainted under better circumstances than we had the first time. Kim obviously didn’t like him, and neither did Zhao. If the enemy of my enemy was my friend, that seemed to go double for Pang. I decided it was worth finding out what was on his mind.

“I’m sorry you got mixed up with Zhao,” he said. “I should have warned you.”

“Do you have a free pass across the border? How did you get here?”

“The border isn’t much of problem these days, Inspector. You could go out and come back all without a passport if you wanted to.”

“I’d rather not get my shoes wet.” I could see that he had two bodyguards with him. One was about ten meters ahead; the other was the same distance behind. “Are we going to hold the entire meeting here, or should we walk a little, to give the SSD teams some exercise?”

“Either way. I like rivers. They are unambiguous dividing points. There is nothing uncertain about where you stand in relation to a river. You’re either on this side or that. Borders shift around; rivers are usually more permanent. Don’t look now, but up ahead on that bench is one of Zhao’s men. It’s his number three, a real viper. From what the coroner in Shenyang tells me, he spits poison in the eyes of his victims.”

“Why, I don’t know, but a lot of people seem to want to be helpful these days, giving me warnings. Let me return the favor. You ought to know-if someone hasn’t made this clear already-that Zhao is not going to throw you a birthday party this year.”

Pang moved his head and put his finger on a scar that went vertically down the left side of his throat. “This was not from a love bite, Inspector. The key point to understand at the moment is that Zhao doesn’t want us cooperating.”

“We’re not.”

“Zhao doesn’t know that. No one who sees us walking together at sunset along the river would know that.” Pang smiled at me. A person might think it was a pleasant smile. A person might even forget about the hole in the captain’s head.

“How do you suppose that Zhao knows that I am going to Macau?”

“Zhao knows a great deal. That shouldn’t surprise you, Inspector.”

“Who told him?”

“He goes into a lot of offices during the course of a day, as you know.”

“True, it could have been Major Kim, but it could as easily have been you. You knew about it even before I did.”

“Why would I want to tell Zhao anything?”

“That’s what I’m wondering.”

“Good, keep wondering.” As we passed the viper, Pang smiled again-well this side of pleasant-and said something in a Chinese dialect that threw hatchets. The security man in front of us had stopped and watched closely, his right hand in his jacket pocket. “I mentioned that I’d heard about his mother and turtles. I don’t think he liked it.” Pang looked at his watch. “I have an hour or two to kill, Inspector; would you care to join me for a drink? Don’t worry. I don’t shoot people at close range. There’s no challenge to it.”