James Church - The Man with the Baltic Stare

A soft knock on the door brought me back. “What?” I wasn’t expecting visitors.

“Housekeeping.”

“Go away.”

“Turndown service.”

I walked over to the entryway. “Turndown what?”

“Turndown service.”

I opened the door to find a middle-aged woman in a maid’s uniform. “I’m supposed to turn down your bed and leave a candy on your pillow,” she said. “You want it or don’t you?”

“No, I don’t.” I started to close the door, but then a question occurred to me. “Who owns this place?”

“What?”

“Who owns this hotel? It’s foreign, isn’t it? It doesn’t feel right. The fellow in the tight pants even asked for a tip.”

She gave me a big smile. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean, sir.”

“Sir? Who taught you to say that? I suppose you curtsey now, too.”

She bobbed her head. “Good evening and pleasant dreams.”

The phone rang, so I closed the door and went over to the desk. The phone was white, new, with lots of buttons on it. I took a chance and punched one of them. “Yes?”

“Inspector, I hope I didn’t wake you.”

“Who is this?”

“You don’t recognize my voice?”

“Should I?”

“This is Major Kim. We saw each other briefly this evening, though we weren’t introduced. I thought we might have a drink, talk a little, trade stories. That sort of thing.”

“That sort of thing.”

“If you’re hungry, we can get a bite to eat. I don’t think the hotel restaurant is still open, and the room service menu is not exciting, but there are other places nearby you might enjoy.”

“Noodles.”

“What’s that?”

“I said noodles. I like noodles.”

“Well, then, noodles it is.” A silence. “You there?”

“Sure.” This was the man who made everyone nervous. I didn’t need noodles all that badly. “I was thinking. It’s getting late; maybe I should skip eating tonight.”

“Don’t do that, Inspector. You never know when you’ll get another chance.”

No wonder he makes people nervous, I thought. “OK, where?”

“I’m in the parking lot in front of the hotel right now. Come down in five minutes. You’ll find me; don’t worry.”

“I’ll be wearing what I had on before.”

“I know.”

The restaurant was in a building that hadn’t been there the last time I was in Pyongyang. It was in my old patrol sector, and in those days I knew every crummy structure, every crack in every façade, every doorway out of plumb, and every crooked window. This place was modern, only three stories high but very sleek. The front door opened to a small vestibule where a young woman in a low-cut long red dress waited.

“Good evening, Major Kim,” she said. “Your table is ready.” She didn’t look at me, not even a glance, before turning to lead us to a corner in the back, where there was a triangular table surrounded by a lot of plants. We sat, and the lady in red disappeared.

“You look to be in shock, Inspector. Anything I can do for you? Maybe we should start with a couple of drinks.” The major pressed a button on the side of the table, and a man wearing an austere smile and a white coat appeared.

“Your usual, sir?” he asked.

“Yes, Michael, thank you. And one for our guest, as well.”

The white coat vanished behind a fern.

“Michael?” I said. “Have we stopped the pretense of Korean names at last? Do I get to pick my own? Or have you already selected one for me? Let me guess. Paul? No, probably not. Matthew, perhaps? At least we’re not going for Japanese names again. My grandfather hated his. He never told me what it was.”

“Do you know who I am?” The major sat at arm’s length from the table, making clear to anyone watching that we were not trading secrets. “Why don’t we start there? The rest of the conversation will flow much more easily.”

An easily flowing conversation was the last thing I wanted with this man. “The girl in the red dress. Unusual accent.”

The major showed me his teeth. “Very good, Inspector. Most people don’t hear the accent. They’re too captivated by the neckline.”

“The accent, I can’t quite place it. It’s been nearly trained out of her, but something is still there, a faint echo. Sort of fetching, in its own way.”

“Anything else?”

“Smarmy group in the hotel; a few of them are still shy a coat or two of hospitality paint.”

“Something wrong with the hotel? The room not up to your expectations?” He leaned forward to show me that he cared.

“The room is fine. Everything is fine. Our meeting earlier this evening in that dark cave was fine. You’ve made a hit with those three house dogs, by the way. Maybe you should throw them a bone every so often, though.”

The austere smile materialized from around a potted palm, and drinks were placed in front of us.

“Thank you, Michael,” the major said. “We’ll order in a few minutes.”

The white coat disappeared into the jungle.

“Do you always circle around a conversation like this?” The major lifted his glass. “A toast to you, Inspector. Welcome home.”

“Major what? Major who? Major from where? Is there a new special group operating outside the normal channels?” I clinked glasses. “Normal channels. Normal. You know what’s normal? Dawn, the sun coming up over the next mountain. That’s perfectly normal. But this, I don’t get the feeling this,” I waved my glass in his direction, “is normal.”

“Off we go, circling again.”

“OK, no more circles. I’ll lunge. Where are you from?” I took a swallow of my drink.

“Seoul.”

I took another swallow. “Do they have menus here, or do we make it up? Incidentally,” I pointed over his shoulder, “whoever installed the wire in that ficus behind you didn’t know what he was doing. It dangles, like a water snake over a pond.” The drink had skipped my stomach and gone to my brain. “I wouldn’t use a wire if I were you. If you use something like that snake in the ficus, it has to be transcribed. Transcribers always fill in what they can’t hear, and they always get it wrong. Hire a note taker. I’ll bet that woman in the red dress is a terrific note taker.”

Major Kim shook his head. “Don’t worry. We don’t guess. We don’t have to. Our equipment is very, very, very good.”

Interesting, I thought to myself, he was from the South, and his girlfriend with the soft accent and the neckline was, too. That wasn’t so odd, was it? South Koreans had been coming up north for years. So there were two of them here, so what? My inner voice tried to keep a normal tone, nothing alarmist, but it wasn’t very convincing. Li’s words of warning to me hung like a wreath from the branches of the ficus: You don’t know what you think you know.

“You’re back in Pyongyang because we need your help, Inspector.” Kim swirled the liquor in his glass. “There is a little problem, and we think you might be able to fix it.”

Whenever I hear “we” in connection with the word “problem,” especially “little problem,” I start to worry. First my nerves go on alert; then I start to worry.

“Sorry,” I said, “I’m not in the problem-fixing business anymore. I’m in no business. I follow no professional path. I’m unencumbered, untroubled, and uninterested. To tell you the truth-and you are partial to the truth; I sensed that right away-if the price of dinner is listening to your problem, I can drink a beer in my hotel room. I hope that doesn’t seem rude.” I started to push back my chair. “Anyway, I don’t think I’m authorized to talk to you.” I wasn’t authorized to talk to anyone as far as I was concerned. That’s why I had gone up on the mountain.