The Expediter (33 page)

The operations center at the State Safety and Security Agency had been quiet all morning despite the turmoil outside over the Chinese thing, and despite the unprecedented arrival of the American under Colonel Pak’s supervision. And Lieutenant Hang-gook Ma, today’s duty officer,
was damned glad of it, because the last few days had been a nightmare. Dear Leader had turned his gaze toward them, and that never was a good thing. The slightest mistake could mean a man’s life.

Most of the ten clerks on the main floor were doing busywork, typing reports from information that came in from not only around the capital city but from all the outlying districts across the country. Nothing important.

Hang-gook stepped out of his glass-enclosed office and stopped for a moment to survey his domain. On most days he was proud of his position, nothing much ever happened. But just now he would have given a year’s pay to be somewhere else. Cleaning streets, anything. He was a slightly built man, with a narrow face, intensely dark eyes, and a thin mustache that he thought made him look like an Indian movie star.

A cup of tea from the cafeteria downstairs would go good now, he decided, and he started across the room when one of his corporals who was speaking on the telephone looked up and waved him over.

“Can’t you handle whatever it is?” Hang-gook asked.

“This is the police in In’chon. They’ve arrested a woman who was impersonating a South Korean spy.”

“Ridiculous,” Hang-gook said. “Why would anyone want to do something like that?”

“Shall we pass this along to Colonel Pak? We might catch him before he leaves the building.”

“What, are you stupid? We won’t be bothering the colonel over something like this, especially not now.”

“Yes, sir. They want to know what to do with their prisoner.”

“Let her go or shoot her, I don’t care which,” Hang-gook said. “I’m going for tea.”

“Yes, sir,” the corporal said and he turned back to the phone. “Do whatever you want with her, but don’t waste a cell and don’t feed her no matter what sort of wild stories she’s telling you. But first find out who she really is.”

Hang-gook turned and walked away when the corporal suddenly
swore. The lieutenant stopped and turned back. All of his clerks had looked up at the outburst.

“Wait, you idiot, I want you to tell this to my lieutenant.”

Hang-gook had a tickle at the back of his head, and an unsettled feeling in his stomach that something was about to happen that he’d fervently prayed never would; he was going to be put in a position where he would have to make a decision.

The clerk was holding out the phone for him, a neutral expression on his narrow face. He was passing the buck and glad of it.

The connection was lousy as was most telephone service from outside Pyongyang and at first Hang-gook had trouble understanding what the man was saying, except that he was Sergeant Hwang Jong-li the chief detective in Ich’on about one hundred and fifty kilometers to the southeast.

“Who is this woman you’re talking about? Have you identified her?”

“She was carrying only an identity card from the South. Says her name is Huk Kim, and that you’re holding her husband Huk Soon. She’s telling some wild story about an assassination. Frankly I was about to turn her over to the hospital.”

This was even worse than anything Hang-gook could ever have imagined. It put him directly in the middle of the most important investigation in the history of Chosun. Dear Leader himself had taken an interest, and whatever happened, whatever decisions were made— good or bad—he would know.

“How do you know the woman’s telling the truth?”

“I don’t know anything of the sort, Lieutenant. Her story is too fantastic to believe, but I don’t know what she’s up to. She talks like a Southerner, although her clothes are definitely from here.”

Hang-gook glanced at his clerks, but all of them had gotten back to work. Even the corporal had turned away and was furiously typing something.

“What do you want us to do with her?” the cop from Ich’on asked.

Hang-gook tried to reason out his responsibilities. If the colonel
were here the decision would be his. But Pak had left strict instructions that he was not to be bothered this morning, for any reason.

“Lieutenant?” the irritating cop’s voice was like an insect in Hang-gook’s ear.

“How much persuasion did you need to make her talk?”

“None,” the detective replied. “She kept repeating the same story, and insisted that I contact State Security because she knew who was behind the assassination.”

Suddenly enlightenment was Hang-gook’s. In his mind this was the finest zen moment of his life, and he smiled for the first time since the killings in front of the Chinese Embassy. This meant the right sort of recognition, even promotion to senior lieutenant.

“Bring her here,” he told the detective, his voice in his own ear calm, but crisp.

“What? We don’t have the fuel allocation.”

“Never mind about that. Listen very carefully now. This woman is of supreme importance to state security. I want her brought to my office, and I am giving you just ninety minutes in which to do it.”

“I’ll need authorization—”

“You have it from Dear Leader who is personally interested in this investigation,” Hang-gook said. “Do I make myself clear?”

The line was silent for a long moment “Of course, Lieutenant. I’ll personally escort her.”

“And make sure that she talks to no one else. No one!”

“Is it true then, what she’s told us? The assassination?”

“I suggest for your sake, Detective Sergeant Hwang, that you completely forget everything that you have heard. Bring the woman here and your name will be mentioned favorably in my report.”

Ri went back across the street to get the Lada after McGarvey had explained to him and Pak what he had in mind. And now riding across the river to the Yangakdo Hotel on the island, the sergeant was in a black mood, and kept up a steady stream of objections in Korean.

“I don’t think he believes you,” Soon said to McGarvey. They were seated together in the backseat.

“Doesn’t matter,” McGarvey said.

Pak, who was riding shotgun in the front, looked over his shoulder. “Then what does matter, Mr. McGarvey?”

“I want him to show us how he did it.”

“I told you—” Soon said.

“Without the help of the Pyongyang police, or maybe some of Colonel Pak’s people.”

Ri said something under his breath, but Pak calmed him down. “He’s perfectly right to doubt us.”

They took a left on the paved road that ran round the shoreline, past the International Cinema and finally the forty-five-story modern hotel that was used almost exclusively by tour groups. The hotel’s employees, mostly Chinese, were treated the same as the tourists, never getting off the island without an escort.

The normally busy parking lot was practically empty as was the expansive lobby when they showed up. Every tour group scheduled since the assassination had been canceled. No one on the hotel staff had been told why, and no one, according to Pak, was asking any questions.

Ri pulled up in front, but no bellman came out, nor did either of the clerks at the front desk or the manager standing nearby approach
as Soon led McGarvey and the two State Security agents across the lobby to the elevator.

“How close do you want me to play this?” Soon asked.

“I want everything,” McGarvey said.

“My room was on the tenth floor, Kim’s was on the twelfth,” Soon said on the way up. “At midnight we got out of bed, got dressed in dark slacks and dark pullovers, and met downstairs.”

“Were your roommates involved?” Pak asked.

“We drugged them so they’d sleep through the night.”

They got off on the tenth floor and Soon led them first to his room halfway down the corridor from the elevators, and then to the emergency stairs at the end. “It was our last night here so we’d had two weeks to figure out the hotel’s routines. Between midnight and three in the morning were the quietest hours. All the cleaning people were done, and the breakfast staff didn’t start until around four.”

The four of them followed Soon down to the service level one floor below the lobby. The laundry, heating plant, electrical distribution room, and maintenance areas were down a broad corridor to the left, and the room service kitchen, pantries, walk-in coolers and freezers, and the loading dock were to the right. The few staff on duty momentarily stopped what they were doing to look up at the strangers, one of whom was obviously a foreigner, but immediately turned away.

“The kitchen was deserted at that hour so it was no problem getting out of the hotel from the delivery entrance,” Soon told them.

“Did you steal a truck?” Ri asked. “None were reported missing. Anyway how did you get past the checkpoint on the bridge?”

“We didn’t steal a truck.”

“Then how did you get across the river?”

“They swam,” McGarvey said. “They killed the cops for their uniforms and weapons, and stuffed everything, including their own clothes into plastic bags.”

“We found one in the bastard’s suitcase,” Ri said. “We never thought they really swam accross.”

They had walked up the driveway and crossed the road to the
bushes along the river where Soon waited for his wife to join them. They had seen the police patrols from their hotel windows, and knew the cops traveled in pairs on foot.

“You waited in the bushes and killed them,” Ri said. “Bastard.”

“We needed their uniforms and their weapons,” Soon replied matter-of-factly.

“You’re taking this well,” Pak observed.

“From the moment you pulled me off the Beijing flight I knew that I was a dead man walking. But my wife escaped and she knows how to take care of herself.”

“You don’t care about those two cops you killed?” Ri demanded. He couldn’t get over it.

“No. They were North Koreans, the enemy.” Soon turned away and looked across the river. “We swam over from here and it was damned cold. Kim had a lot of trouble, even more on the way back.”

“Then what?” McGarvey asked, expecting the sort of explanation Soon gave him, because he knew that with a little bit of luck it would have worked. But one big question remained.

“We’re not taking a swim this morning,” Pak said. “We’ll drive over.”

Back on the mainland Ri pulled into the park where Soon and Kim had gotten out of the river and changed into the police uniforms. The day was bright and warm, and a lot of people were out and about, but as before in the park across from State Security headquarters, no one paid them any attention.

“Where’d you leave your clothes?” Pak asked.

“We put them in the plastic bags and hung them on the seawall. There’s a ladder.”

“From that point you strolled up the street over to the Chinese Embassy, in the open, knowing that no one was about to stop a couple of police officers making their rounds,” Pak said.

“Weren’t you worried about a passing patrol car?” Ri asked. “If a supervisor had come along you could have been in trouble.”

“We stayed in the shadows mostly,” Soon replied. “Anyway we didn’t see anyone until we got to the embassy.”

“They stayed out of sight until the car pulled up and General Ho walked out of the embassy,” Pak told McGarvey. “Then they stepped out into the open so that the security camera taped them shooting the general, the driver, and the Chinese guards. We were given a copy of it.”

“Taped two North Korean cops pulling the triggers,” Ri said.

“Afterward we came back here, got out of the uniforms, and swam back across the river and got back into the hotel the same way we got out.”

“They both would have gotten away if the bodies of the police officers they’d dumped in the river hadn’t turned up so quickly,” Pak said. He shook his head. “How much were you paid?” he asked Soon.

“A lot of money.”

Ri wanted to take him apart on the spot. “The Colonel asked you a question.”

“It doesn’t matter how much,” McGarvey said. “I want to know how he knew the precise time the general would be leaving the embassy.”

“Alexandar told us.”

“How did he know?”

Soon shrugged. “His intel has always been the best, and this time was no different. I didn’t question it.”

The implication suddenly struck Pak. “That’s impossible. Even if this Russian ex-KGB officer of his was still connected with Moscow there’s no way that the general’s schedule could have been known.”

“I expect that the Russians have penetrated Chinese intelligence,” McGarvey said. “Either that or the leak’s here, someone on Kim Jong Il’s staff.”

“Not here,” Pak said. “Even so why would the Russians want to start a war between us and China? It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Why don’t you ask your friend,” Soon said. “The CIA sent him here to make a deal with me. The Americans are the only ones who want this war.”