Bamboo and Blood (13 page)

Jenö passed me the book, his finger on the edge of an envelope
between the pages. “They were sold out of volume twenty-two, but the lady assured me this one was equally as good.” His eyebrows did that bouncy, energetic dance the visiting Russian troupes always performed near the end of one of their programs. They call it a country quadrille. I just wasn’t sure what country.

In the midst of nowhere, in the middle of what should have been a small, narrow valley of rice fields backed up against a frozen river and lines of tall, ragged hills, a triple barrier cut across the land. On the outer perimeter, an electrified wire fence held up with thick concrete posts; inside that, electrified wires running close to the ground; finally, inside that, coils of barbed wire. The two electrified barriers probably weren’t live. There wasn’t any electricity out here, unless they had their own generator. If they did, it wasn’t running. Generators hum, but everything was quiet. No birds, no people, no nothing.

A bridge stretched over the river, but I decided to park and go ahead on foot; the pilings didn’t look strong enough to take the weight of my car. On the far side of the bridge was a wide gate. In front of it stood an army guard, sunken cheeks, sunken eyes. The eyes glanced at my ID.

“Wait,” was all he said before he disappeared into a hut just inside the gate. I waited. It’s best not to seem impatient when standing outside a military gate in the middle of nowhere. To pass the time, I flexed my shoulder. It was stiffening up, probably because on my way here, I’d had to back downhill nearly half a kilometer when one narrow road over a mountain just stopped. If anyone had reported the country was minus one road, it hadn’t made its way to the Ministry’s transportation office.

A second guard walked up and looked me over. He seemed more alert than his companion; maybe he wasn’t used to visitors flexing at the gate. His expression was distinctly veiled. Not just one of those slack looks country people give you; this one was more careful than that. It was calculated, carefully designed to have no sure meaning. I remembered my conversation with Jenö. Which schoolboy would this have been? The one that hung back? The one that turned his head away?

Off to the side, about ten paces away, was an elevated guard post, big enough for one man and high enough for him to be a couple of meters above anyone at the gate. It was meant for a third guard to watch the other two and to make sure that if anything went wrong, there was backup with a clear line of fire. But it was unoccupied.

The first guard emerged with my ID. He handed it back without any reaction. No eye contact; no gesture that I should pass; no refusal. In my days in the army, ambiguity hadn’t been one of our options. We told people yes or no; pass or go away. Those were the choices. Things apparently had changed. I decided the absence of a clear negative was positive enough, so I started through the gate.

“Halt!”

I stopped. Quick movements after a command like that were never wise. There was a pistol aimed at my chest. The man holding it had on a thick coat with a hood. It was the kind officers in special favor wore, but I couldn’t see any insignia.

“A problem with my ID?” I glanced back casually at the two guards. Their weapons weren’t drawn, which I assumed was a good sign—unless that, too, had changed.

“I want an explanation, and make sure it’s convincing. Your ID tells me who you are, not why you want to get onto my facility.” He didn’t emphasize it, but he didn’t have to—“my” facility.

“Official business.”

“Official business.” The pistol didn’t waver. “Whereas, apparently you think I’m on holiday.” The officer took a step toward me. “This isn’t the sort of place your ministry has any business, official or otherwise.”

“Not normally,” I said. This man was too self-assured to be a colonel. Colonels are jumpy, even senior colonels. He must be a general, though I didn’t recall generals being so short on support staff—adjutants and so forth. It wasn’t usual for generals to hold pistols on visitors; that’s why the lower ranks existed. Whether he was the man Jenö wanted to meet remained unclear. If he didn’t shoot me, we were off to a good start.

“Your ministry has no business out here at all, not ever.” His tone was brusque, but his finger had come off the trigger.

“In this case, it is something important. Not normal important. Very important.”

“Of course. Why would anyone drive out from the warmth and comfort of Pyongyang if he didn’t have something very important to do?”

I hadn’t seen any tire tracks on the road up to the gate. It was hard to imagine a general without a staff car, or a jeep. The colonel in Pyongyang didn’t have a driver. This man didn’t even appear to have a jeep. “Our conversation might be more productive if one of us didn’t have a weapon pointed at his midsection.”

The barrel dropped a hair. “Better?”

“I take it you’re not going to allow me to carry out my mission.”

“Very impressive word—mission. A solo mission, at that. Why are you by yourself? I thought the police traveled in packs.”

“Maybe you’re not the only ones shorthanded these days.” I nodded at his empty guard post. Pointing would have meant moving my hands, and I didn’t want to do anything that put his finger back on the trigger.

He didn’t take his eyes off me. “I have to send some of them home. I’ve fed those I could with my own rations, but it’s not enough. So I send them back to their mothers to cluck over them. As if their families have more food than we do.” He holstered the pistol. “You can sit in the hut if you like while you try to explain why you’re here. Then I’ll decide what to do with you.”

“Do you mind if I go back to my car to get something?” The general didn’t reply, and the guards, after watching his face, stared at nothing.

When Jenö had asked me again to help him set up his meeting and told me who it was he wanted to meet, I drove back to the office and told Pak we needed to dump our visitor. Get rid of him, fast. He was going to get himself into serious trouble, and if we were standing next to him, we’d end up in the same pot. For the second time in the same day, Pak surprised me.

“We can’t dump him. You’d better go out and see what this is about.”

I was stupefied. “Are you kidding?”

“Sometimes, Inspector, it is better to bend a little. It’s unusual what he wants, but everything is unusual these days. There are winds blowing from places you and I don’t even know exist. Forget the Ministry; they don’t have to know, and if they find out, I’ll handle it.” He glanced at the envelope Jenö had given me. “Don’t open that,” he said. He reached into his desk and took out a small book of red coupons. I could see it had never been used. He tore off the first two tickets and handed them to me. “These should get you access to special rations. Notice I said ‘should.’ This booklet is three years old, and who knows what’s gone cockeyed in the meantime. I was told only to use the coupons in extreme situations. No one defined extreme, though, so I’m doing it myself.”

“You have access to grain?” I squeezed every drop of surprise out of my voice.

“I’ve thought about it a lot, Inspector. I don’t need your disapproving stare. I can’t use these for personal rations. I can’t, and I won’t.”

“But you can use them for this crazy foreigner?”

“Maybe the grain isn’t for him. Maybe it’s for something more important.”

“Really? And am I to be let in on this little secret, or do I just follow orders? These mysterious breezes, are they why you stood up to the special section when they were here last month? Was it because you knew more about the foreigner than you bothered to tell me?”

Pak put the coupon book back in the drawer and slammed it shut. “Don’t press me on this, Inspector. I’ve got a lot on my mind. Keep it simple. If those tickets really work and you can get a couple of bags of rice, throw them in the car and bring them out to your meeting. Take this along, too.” He took a piece of paper from his desk, folded it in thirds, and put it in a tan envelope with a red stripe in one corner. Then he pulled a strip of white paper from the flap and sealed it. “Amazing, isn’t it? The supplies some sections have.”

“A red stripe? Isn’t that a little melodramatic?”

“Just be glad it doesn’t have a black stripe.” Pak handed me the envelope. “This may come in handy. It’s from someone I used to know. Apparently, he wants our guest to have that meeting.”

“And we take orders from him? Since when?”

“Not orders, Inspector. Call it a favor.”

“Do I know him?”

“If you didn’t before, you do now.” Pak nodded at the envelope. “Don’t use it unless you have to. And try not to get yourself shot. You’ll be a long way out in the countryside, and I’m not sure we have the resources to go looking for bodies.”

At the ration depot, the red tickets only got me a few half-empty bags of rice and a sour look from the supply clerk. “I didn’t know people at your level could get these tickets,” was his only comment.

I left the sacks in the trunk of my car and carried back a small bag to the front gate. The gaunt guard wouldn’t look at me. He frowned at the bag and then waved me into the hut. The general sat alone at the table. He had taken off his parka, though it was even colder in the room than it was outside. I put the bag down in front of him. “It would please me if you shared my dinner,” I said. He didn’t react. I put down the envelope. I hadn’t opened it; I wasn’t even tempted. Jenö had passed it to me, but from Pak’s reaction, I could tell it was from someone I had never met and didn’t especially want to.

The general quickly opened the bag, divided the contents into six portions, and called out to the guards. As they came in, one at a time, he handed a portion to each of them. When that was done, he stood and carried the third portion along with the envelope through a doorway into a dark room at the back of the hut. With the door shut, I could hear no more than a murmur of voices, someone coughing, and a sound of a dog barking once, softly, as if muzzled.

“My adjutant,” the general said when he emerged again. “He’s not well.” That left three portions. He nodded and gave one to me. The
second he put in his pocket. “Come with me, Inspector,” he said. The last portion stayed on the table.

Outside, as soon as we were beyond earshot of the gate guards, he stopped. “You seem awfully sure of yourself,” he said. “Passing things to people you don’t know. It’s not wise.” It was cold enough for the parka, but he’d left it behind. He was going to make it clear to me that he was tougher than I was.

“I’m not worried. In Pyongyang, a colonel threatened to have me shot.”

“Son of a bitch!” he shouted so loud that the gaunt guard whirled around to see what had happened. “At our last staff meeting, we were told colonels couldn’t shoot policemen. Only generals could.” He laughed; it didn’t seem to be something he did very often. “I wouldn’t have shot you.”

“I think I knew that.”

“Even so, one of the guards might have pulled the trigger. They don’t need my permission to shoot. Their standing orders are to keep out of this compound anyone—anyone—who doesn’t carry special orders. You don’t have anything like that. You don’t even have regular orders. Out here, your ID is garbage.”

“That’s what I’ve been told. If you don’t mind my saying, your soldiers didn’t seem ready to shoot. They’re surly enough, but not killers, I’d say.”

“Only a few of them carry live rounds. You wouldn’t want to find out which ones, believe me. Anyway, you don’t know for sure that those were the only guards watching, or whether my weapon was the only one trained on you. All you know is what you saw.”

“Ah, reality,” I said. “You’re right, I only know what I saw. I am fairly sure, however, that I saw you pick up that envelope and carry it into that back room. You didn’t have it when you came back. So, can I see this facility or not, General?”

“You shouldn’t be here.” The general kicked a stone to the side and started walking. “No one should. Not even the army. The place is empty. It’s falling down. And you still haven’t told me what you want.”

“Someone needs to look around, with your permission.”

“Someone without authorization, obviously. What if I say no?”

I didn’t reply. Of course he would say no. How could anyone in his right mind say anything other than no?

The general took a pair of gloves from his belt and put them on. He was tough, but he wasn’t crazy, I decided. The cold was immense.

“Let me ask the question another way,” he said. “Maybe it will help you formulate a response that goes beyond a dumb stare. What is this about?”

Jenö had been vague, and Pak, after he’d heard my account, hadn’t gone beyond saying I should make the contact but not get myself killed in the process. I didn’t think either of those explanations would be edifying.

“When a general asks a question, a general expects an answer. You must have learned that somewhere along the way. If it will do any good, I can repeat myself. This facility is off-limits. Very, strictly, completely, totally off-limits.”

“That’s why it was selected, one presumes.”

“I’d be jeopardizing my men, not to mention myself, if I let someone visit here for purposes I didn’t understand and that were never adequately explained. I’m not interested in what you presume. What do you know?”

“The contents of that note weren’t enough?” I thought I felt one of the winds Pak had warned me about starting to blow across the open ground.

“That note isn’t your business.”

I didn’t have any instructions or explanations on how to keep this going any further than I’d taken it. All I could say was what popped into my head. “Maybe no one need know about the visitor or the visit.”

He shook his head. “Don’t be a fool, Inspector. My men are loyal, but only up to a point. People can’t simply materialize inside this compound. You and your visitor will have to go through the gate, past the guards. Even if they let you in, word will leak out quickly. Do you think the guard with the dull eyes doesn’t see everything around him? People check and double-check. The political officers come through and ask questions. On occasion, the field telephones even work all the way out here.” If there was a straight “no” in there, I didn’t hear it.