A Drop of Chinese Blood (27 page)

“Me?” My uncle was calm. “He wanted some water, so I gave him a glass from that pitcher.” He pointed. “Who else has been in here?”

“Get into the waiting room and don’t leave,” said the nurse. “I’m calling the doctor.”

“Maybe you’d better call the police,” my uncle said.

“I’ll handle things.” The nurse picked up the water pitcher and dumped the water down the small sink beside the door. “Do as I say.”

My uncle motioned for me to come with him. He sat down in the waiting room. I remained standing. “Let’s not wait around,” I said.

“And do what? Make a run for it? Bad idea. She’s not going to call the police.”

“How do you know that?”

“Blue Sparrow. Besides, she poured the contents of the pitcher down the sink. The police won’t like that. She’s calling the doctor right now. Didn’t I tell you? The vice minister called his political officer.”

“You mentioned a fish.”

“Yes, he was waiting here for us. He said he knew where the seal was, and that he’d be more specific once he was sure you’d protect him.”

“What was he doing here?”

“Pretty out-of-the-way place. He must have figured it was safe hiding right under their noses.”

“Under whose noses?”

“The North Koreans, who else? This is a North Korean clinic. The doctor is North Korean, part of a health agreement Pyongyang has with Ulan Bator. These clinics practice traditional medicine. People like it better than the modern stuff, mostly because they think it works.”

“I guess it wasn’t as safe as he thought.”

“We all make mistakes, though they’re usually not as fatal as his was. You think he misjudged all on his own?”

For once I was not just with my uncle, I was way ahead of him. “Someone lured him here. Rat takes the cheese. You think the doctor knew?”

“If he didn’t, the nurse seemed to.”

“She let you back there. We walked right into it.”

“Maybe. Or maybe she meant for me to keep him safe until the doctor showed up, and we figured out some way to get him out of here.”

“Didn’t he say anything else about the seal?”

My uncle did something I’d never heard him do. He groaned slightly. “lt was like a script from a bad movie. He said he knew where the seal was. He started to say something else, then his throat went dry and he pointed at the pitcher of water.”

“Why’d she pour out that pitcher right away?”

“You tell me.”

“Let’s go back and check his things. He must have brought some files with him to make himself more valuable.”

“Don’t bother. They won’t be in the room. He was too nervous. I think he had the feeling he was right on the edge of disaster.”

“So which was it, did he think it was safe here, or did he think it wasn’t safe?”

My uncle gave that some thought. “Maybe he figured it was safe until he saw something that changed his mind.”

It wasn’t a bad thought, so I followed it. “What if he saw someone he knew, someone he didn’t want to see?”

“Could be. Or maybe something that didn’t fit. He got agitated when I walked in, but he relaxed a little when he saw it was me.”

“How’d you know he’d be here?”

My uncle shook his head. “Not important.”

“Not to you, maybe, but it is to me. It was Madame Fang, wasn’t it? She brought him here.”

“At the moment, we don’t need to worry how he got here. We need to find what he carried with him. If he had files when he showed up on my side of the river, he’ll have taken files with him when he swam back. We’ll ask the doctor when he arrives.”

“The doctor? You said he was North Korean!”

“What is that supposed to mean? You think his heart doesn’t beat exactly like yours?”

“I wasn’t implying anything. I’m half Korean, you seem to forget.”

“No, I don’t forget. Sometimes I just don’t know where it’s hidden. Do you?”

Insanity! No matter where we were, no matter what was going on, the slightest spark could ignite this blaze. “Why are you always irrational on this point? I am who I am. Nothing is hidden.”

His lips tightened into a straight line, turned down at each corner. “I won’t raise it again.”

“Yes you will. You’ll keep at it forever and then some. I can’t help it if I have a drop of Chinese blood in me. In fact, I’m proud of it.”

My uncle looked away. He seemed drained. It was my fault; there was no need to have said that. We sat in the worst sort of silence for a few minutes. It was too much for me, so I broke it. “What now?”

“Nothing to do but wait.” My uncle took a piece of wood from his pocket, a small piece of pine, and smoothed it between his fingers. “The doctor is due back in an hour, if the nurse is right.”

5

“Good afternoon.” A man came in the front door and looked at us with surprise. “Have you checked in with the nurse? I didn’t know anyone was waiting. Let me wash up and I’ll be right with you. I don’t want to shake hands, there’s a flu going around.” He walked over to my uncle. “I’m Dr. Lim.” He was the calmest person I’d ever seen in my life. Just looking at him lowered my blood pressure.

“Whenever you’re ready, Doctor.” My uncle pointed at the door to the patient rooms. “I think your nurse is in the back. She might have something to discuss with you first. Didn’t she call you?”

The doctor’s eyebrows went up slightly. “Well, then, why don’t I go back and see what she has to say. If you don’t mind waiting a bit longer.” He smiled at me. “Are you two gentlemen together?”

My uncle nodded. “Yes, this is my friend and colleague. He was kind enough to drive me here. I would have driven myself, but he insisted.”

“A good thing, too.” The doctor looked closely at my uncle. “I don’t think you should be driving. I think your pressure is a little high, and you’re prone to fatigue. Nothing to worry about, though you have to watch your diet.”

The doctor disappeared through the door.

“She didn’t call the doctor.” I stood up. “She must have called the cops. Let’s get out of here.”

“Don’t worry, she called him. He already knows what’s what.”

“He’s certainly calm about it, and a liar to boot. What weird courtly ritual were you two acting out?”

“You never saw people being polite to each other before?”

“Yeah, but usually not at a murder scene.”

We waited a few minutes, heard voices from the back, and then the doctor came through the door, wearing a white coat. If anything, he looked even calmer than before. He pulled a chair over in front of us and sat down.

“The nurse is pretty sure it wasn’t poison,” he said. “Based on the symptoms, I’m not ready to say one way or the other. There might have been something in that pitcher besides water, but I doubt it. She admitted to me she shouldn’t have dumped the contents down the sink, but there will be a residue and I’ve locked the pitcher away for safekeeping. It’s possible he died from some sort of seizure. There will have to be an autopsy to be certain, and I don’t have the right facilities for that. Even if I did, the agreement of my service doesn’t call for me to do that sort of thing. It’s up to Ulan Bator to make the decision on what to do next. It would help to know if he had a history of seizures. Do either of you know?”

We both shook our heads.

“Well then, let’s go on the assumption that something sudden brought it on. Did you say anything to him to get him riled?” The doctor looked at my uncle. “Was he agitated about something?”

My uncle shrugged. “I’d say he was nervous. You knew who he was, of course.”

“You mean did I know who his records say he was, or who he was?” The doctor reached back and took a file off the top of the pile. “He gave us the name Naranbaatar. Had a few pieces of identification with him. Said he had a history of knee problems, that this complaint kept him off horses and indoors most of the time, which explained why his complexion was so smooth. All baloney, but I’m not here to question people. He might have told me he had a jet engine up his ass and could fly to the Altai Mountains, wouldn’t matter to me. I knew right away he didn’t need treatment, that he needed a place to hide, so I hid him.”

“You do that often?” It was the natural question I would have asked if this had been my case, in my district, in my country. But this wasn’t my territory, even though what had happened in the clinic was distinctly my concern. I backtracked as best I could. “What I mean is, how long had he been here?”

The doctor had been about to parry the first question, but he switched quickly to respond to the second. “About a week. A couple of days ago, there was a motorcycle accident. Two motorcycles coming too fast down the highway. One hit an oil slick and crashed into the second. The motorcycles must have flown twenty meters through the air all tangled up before they came down on each other. One of the riders was caught in the wreckage. The gas tanks caught fire; there wasn’t much left of him. The other rider was thrown clear and badly injured but still alive when they brought him in here. He died an hour afterward, nothing I could do. When Naranbaatar saw his face, I thought he might have a heart attack.”

“He recognized who it was?” I couldn’t help sliding back into interrogation mode. “And you, Doctor, did you also recognize who it was?”

The doctor was unflappable. “No, but I recognized something on the remains of the jacket of the other one when they brought the body in. There was an unusual design sewn into the cuffs. One of the security officers from the North Korean embassy had a jacket like that. He wore it when he came by once in a while to check on us.”

“He showed up on a regular basis? How often?”

“Roughly? Three or four times a year. From November through March they don’t bother because it’s too cold. Without looking at my records, I’d guess late April, June, September, and October were usual.”

“But this year the first visit was in May?”

“This year it was still snowing for most of April. What a winter! People said it was the worst in memory. There were dead animals all over the place, frozen stiff. Once the thaw set in, it was a health hazard. Have you ever tried to get rid of several hundred thousand putrefying sheep?”

My uncle wrinkled his nose, but it wasn’t at the thought of decaying sheep. He could tell the doctor was avoiding the question. “So this year, May was the first visit? Is that the only thing that caught your attention, that and the sleeve cuffs?”

“The normal security visitor had already stopped by a week before the crash. This second visit was unusual. It was even more unusual because they don’t often travel in pairs this far out in the countryside. I think Naranbaatar recognized the one who was brought in alive. That was strange because, as I said, this wasn’t someone I knew.”

“You know all the security people?”

“All the regulars who are assigned to the embassy, yes.”

“Your patient, Mr. Naranbaatar, didn’t say anything once he got over his initial shock?”

“No, he just stopped talking to us and took to his bed.”

“The nurse said there was nothing wrong with him when he checked in.”

“That’s right, there wasn’t.”

I lowered the boom. “You knew who he really was, didn’t you, Doctor?”

The doctor looked at me and then turned casually to my uncle. “I’m ready to examine you now. The nurse said you have back problems. Shall we take a look?”

“Why not?” My uncle stood up stiffly. “I’ll follow you, Doctor.”

A thought occurred to me. “Have they come out yet to investigate the accident?”

For the first time, the doctor showed a hint of annoyance. “The Mongolian police? Of course.”

“No, I mean the embassy. I’d be suspicious if I were them.”

“Are you? My nurse told me she thought you were both police of some sort.”

“Your nurse is very perceptive, Doctor.” My uncle walked slowly to the hallway door. “Yet she doesn’t have X-ray vision.”

The doctor smiled. “In that case, take off your outer garments and put on the gown hanging on the back of the door, Inspector. I’ll be in shortly.”

As my uncle disappeared through the doorway, the doctor unlocked a glass cabinet in the corner of the room. I strolled over to check what he was retrieving.

“You still haven’t answered my question, Doctor. Did the embassy come out to investigate yet?”

“How could they? These weren’t members of the embassy staff; they may not have even had proper entry papers.”

“But you said the first rider was the embassy security officer.”

The doctor looked at me coolly. I knew what he was thinking. He was thinking that I was playing a game with him. He hadn’t said any such thing.

“Really,” he said, “if I had the time, I might enjoy this interrogation. I said I thought I recognized the jacket, that’s all.”

“There wasn’t any identification on the body?”

“Paper? If there was, it was incinerated.”

“Tattoos?”

“This isn’t a morgue, it’s a clinic. The local police bundled up the remains and sent them back to Ulan Bator. You can check with them if you like.”

“But you’re a curious, observant man. You have a theory about all this, don’t you?”

“No, I avoid the world of the hypothesis unless it has to do with the ailments of my patients. That’s why I became a doctor.”

“You have a dead patient in the back room. Two days ago, he was half frightened to death by something he saw, and a few hours ago, something he didn’t see took care of the second half. It wasn’t a seizure, and you know it or you wouldn’t have stayed out here talking to me. I’m going to ask you one more question. You don’t have to answer; I don’t have any authority, and you don’t have any obligation. Who were those two motorcyclists?”

He almost decided not to answer, I could tell from he way his breathing changed, but then he sat back in his chair. “I only know what I hear. They were part of a team sent to keep an eye on the transit camp of North Korean refugees. It’s not far from here. Pyongyang tried to complain about the camp when it was first set up, but the Mongolians told them it was on their territory and their own sovereign business. The North backed off, but still does its best, very low-key, to keep tabs on what is going on, who is there, who leaves, and who stays. It’s all relatively smooth. Nothing like on your border.”