A Drop of Chinese Blood (37 page)

“Almost. You want to see it tied up with a pretty bow, or don’t you?”

“Don’t worry about me, I can live with uncertainty in these things. The world exists mostly in a palette of grays. Very soothing if you know how to adjust to it.”

“Good for you, good for all of you Koreans. Life’s uncertain, that’s for sure.” He raised his glass to my uncle and then to me. “Come on, aren’t you going to drink with me? The Kazakh lady complained you wouldn’t drink.”

The room suddenly fell into a profound silence. The color drained from Wu’s face. He put down his drink and looked at my uncle. “Nice,” he said finally. “You pulled me into that so I didn’t even see it coming. What next?”

Since my uncle didn’t say anything, I figured it was my turn to throw in a few words. “Keep talking. You’re doing fine.” I held up the bottle. “Want to finish this? It might ease the pain.”

Wu shook his head. “Let me get to the end. Then I’ll drink the rest and to hell with everything.” He took a deep breath. “Beijing was going to work Du into the plan anyway. This phony state seal had to be perfect, and no one but Du could do that. When his daughter jumped in and got Du involved before it could be done according to the script, Beijing got a little nervous. You probably don’t realize how nervous Beijing gets when it isn’t holding all of the reins.”

My uncle started tidying the top of his desk. “No, I didn’t realize that.”

“Du is a master, we know that, but sometimes he’s too meticulous. He fell behind on the timeline Mike had been handed as his part of the deal. Mike didn’t know for sure who he was working for. He thought it might be the North Koreans, but the offer came to him through a chain of cutouts and he didn’t have time to trace it all out. Anyway, it was nearly a million U.S. in advance to take the deal, and another million if he delivered according to the schedule, which was tight. There was a bonus of two million if the South Koreans accepted the seal without sneezing and used it in Mongolia to ratify the mining deals, though Mike was simply told the bonus came ‘if subsequent performance was satisfactory.’ The lawyers insisted on that language. Mike didn’t really care where the offer came from; he just wanted to get the work done and out the door. But like I said, Du was meticulous; he told Mike a job like this couldn’t be hurried. Mike screamed at Du if it wasn’t completed on time, he wouldn’t be doing any finger painting in the future. These triad guys cut off their own fingers all the time. I guess Mike didn’t think twice about waving the threat around. But it rattled Du. We heard he freaked out, couldn’t get anything done for weeks because his hands were shaking so much. Mike started sending packages to Miss Du in hopes she would encourage her father to get to work.”

My uncle scoffed. “I knew it, I knew those weren’t Du’s fingers.”

“We’ll never really know, unless we find Du. Mike was the type who might cut off someone’s nose to spite his face.”

“What about all that fancy DNA testing I hear about?”

“Forget it. This is an MSS operation that everyone wants buried. Beijing doesn’t want to know what happened to Du. Better for them if he really is in pieces. Why, do you care what happened to him?”

“Not especially. Although there is one thing I would like to know.”

Even with his brain half submerged in alcohol, Wu knew what was coming. His fingers tightened around the arms of the chair.

My uncle leaned into the question. “Who did you hire to kill Lu Xin at that clinic?”

I’ve seen men sober up quickly before, but never as fast as Wu did. He had himself under complete control when he answered. “You don’t want to ask me that, Inspector. First of all, I don’t know. Second of all, simply asking the question puts you in a lot of danger.”

“That’s friendly advice?”

“Beijing already thinks you never retired. Some people in MSS are sure you’re an enemy agent. Didn’t the major tell you?”

My uncle slowly drummed his fingers on the desk for what seemed a lifetime. I hate whiskey, but I never wanted a drink so bad in my life.

“What Major Bing and I discuss is not for you or anyone else to know.” It was not what I expected my uncle to say. I could tell it wasn’t what Wu expected either. “As to what Beijing thinks, I don’t give a rat’s ass. I’ve been through plenty in my life; there’s nothing left that can scare me. I think we all understand each other, and I think from this point on we’re all sort of in this together. So let’s put the remaining pieces of the puzzle on the table and see if we can make them fit, shall we?”

Wu knew it was useless to argue or even to bluff. “Sure, you can try to make the pieces fit. The problem is, just when they look like they will, they won’t. And you know why? Because Mike got greedy again, like he did in New York. He decided that if the seal was so valuable, he could keep it for himself, to forge South Korean government documents that would get him as much money as he wanted, even political access. Who needs a lousy few million? Mike tells everyone how much he hates it here in the northeast. He must have figured the seal could be his ticket up and out to better things.”

“Touching tale of social mobility.” My uncle looked at his watch. “End of story.”

“No, that was the easy part. From here on it gets complicated. I’ll summarize. Beijing dropped the operation when it pulled on a string and discovered that the seal had gone missing. From somewhere—if you ask me, it was from Lu Xin stirring the pot—the story started circulating that the North Koreans might have it. A report came in via Handout that the seal was on its way to Mongolia. This news arrived like a rocket from hell in the special MSS section running the operation. A hasty decision was made to send you, Inspector, and the major here to Mongolia to retrieve the seal, and once you did that, to get rid of both of you. That’s what Ding does for a living.”

I poured myself the rest of the whiskey.

My uncle excused himself. “It’s getting late,” he said. “Good night, Wu. Come by again some time for noodles.”

Wu stood up. “I’ll do that the next time I’m up here in the northeast, Inspector.” They shook hands, and my uncle, after a brief nod in my direction, stepped into the hall. A moment later, the side door to his workshop opened and slammed shut.

Wu drained the last drop from his glass. “Amazing man,” he said. “Well, that’s it for me, Major. We have a lot to do tomorrow. We’d both better get some sleep. I’ll see you in your office bright and early. How do you people in Jilin do it?”

“Do what?”

“Drink all the time. I guess there’s nothing else to do in winter.”

“It’s almost June.”

He looked at the empty whiskey bottle. “Must be something about this part of the country. Thanks for dinner, Major. I think I can find my way out.”

Once Wu was gone, I went back to the library and sat in the dark. I needed the chance to go over things in my head. Some of what happened over the past few weeks was clear, no nuance. Li Xun didn’t make it home; the counterfeit seal was in Mike’s pocket somewhere between my sector and South Korea. I’d never see Tuya again, and on my desk there was the same pile of unpaid bills.

The rest wasn’t so stark. Li Bo-ting had been loyal and reliable, only there was something in him I hadn’t seen. The doctor in the clinic in Mongolia knew more about suffering than he let on, but he was still the kindest man I’d ever meet. Madame Fang? Where she fit I would never know. A lot of loose threads, and I was too tired to pull on them.

Walking down the hall to my bedroom, I stopped to open the door to the courtyard for a breath of air. A light was on in the workshop, and I could hear snatches of a melancholy Korean folk song. The voice quavered, and then all was still.

Somewhere I’d read that the human eye can distinguish 500 shades of gray. Or, in the case of my uncle, 501.

Ulan Bator

July 2009

Also by James Church

A Corpse in the Koryo

Hidden Moon

Bamboo and Blood

The Man with the Baltic Stare

About the Author

JAMES CHURCH (a pseudonym) is a former Western intelligence officer with decades of experience in Asia.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

DROP OF CHINESE BLOOD.
Copyright ©2012 by James Church. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.minotaurbooks.com

www.stmartins.com

Cover design by Ervin Serrano

The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

Church, James, 1947–

      A drop of Chinese blood / James Church.—1st U.S. ed.

      p. cm.

      ISBN 978-0-312-55063-9 (hardcover)

      ISBN 978-1-250-01792-5 (e-book)

      1.  National security—Korea (North)—Fiction.   2.  National security—China—Fiction.   3.  Missing persons—Fiction.   4.  Suspense fiction.   5.  Mystery fiction.   I.  Title.

   PS3603.H88D76 2012

   813'.6—dc23

2012033780

e-ISBN 9781250017925

First Edition: November 2012