Bamboo and Blood (21 page)

My brother and I agreed on nothing other than that we wanted our few meetings to be carefully planned ahead of time. In some ways, he and the Man with Three Fingers were alike, nothing left to chance, though my brother was smarter and more devious.

It had not always been this way between us. Our relations had never been good, but when we were younger, there had been less poison. When it was that things changed, I could not say and had stopped trying to understand. He traveled overseas frequently, ate at restaurants with crystal wineglasses, or so he liked to say. I didn’t know about the
glasses that touched his lips, but I could see with my own eyes that he wore shoes with leather soles. He wouldn’t say what he did on those trips, and I never tried to find out. I could have flipped a file or made a call, but I didn’t want to know. My trips were simpler, easy liaison missions, cheap seats on trains, cheap meals, cheap liquor. No wonder my stomach was bad.

“Once in a while, there’s something to do,” I said. He looked like a prosperous Asian businessman, well-cut suit, perfectly fitted, pale blue shirt. “I do whatever there is to do, then go home. How was I to know you’d be here? If I’d known, I would have told them to get someone else.” His eyes were not as dangerous as they had once been. When he was younger, he could flay a person with his eyes.

“You never make things that simple. Who sent you here? Don’t bother being so secretive. All I have to do is make some phone calls.”

There was never a moment to breathe; as soon as we stepped into each other’s line of fire, the guns started booming. “What do you care? My orders are valid.”

“They can also be canceled.”

There was no sense standing in the damp evening continuing a struggle that would only end when both of us were dead. “Then get them canceled, it doesn’t matter to me. It wasn’t my idea to come out here in the first place.”

My brother stepped around a puddle. He looked carefully at his shoes. “I have a dinner. It will probably last until midnight. We can finish this conversation later. There’s a bar near a hotel on the main street that runs through Coppet, about ten kilometers up the lake.” He reached down and picked a wet leaf off the tip of one shoe. When he stood upright again, he took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his fingers. This was his way of annoying me. It always worked. “Can you find it on your own? You’ll have to take a taxi or hire a car. Meet me there at 1:00 A.M. Everything else in town will be closed but that bar; it will be hard to miss.” He folded the handkerchief carefully, so that all the edges were in line, then put it back into his pocket.

“There may be a parade of people tagging along behind me. They think I’m selling missile parts.”

My brother froze. It was only for a heartbeat, but I saw it. “Surely
you’re not peddling missile parts these days,” I said. “Isn’t that beneath you?

“And surely you’re not digging into other people’s business these days. Oh, wait, I forgot, that’s your job, isn’t it?”

I turned and walked away, up the hill to the drab hotel where I was staying. The mission said it didn’t have space for me, and anyway, my instructions from Sohn were to keep clear of the mission as much as possible when we weren’t in talks. If I seemed to be operating outside the normal bubble, that would attract attention, he said, which is what he wanted me to do. Attract attention. From the two cars parked at either end of the street, it appeared I was succeeding. I decided not to go back to my room yet. I’d seen some beech trees that had been cut down a few streets away; maybe there would be a few chips I could pick up to bring home.

It was hard to find beechwood in Pyongyang. One year my grandfather went to great lengths to have some shipped from Bulgaria. I had imagined a whole trainload would pull up to our door, but there were only a few boards. He treasured them. The day they arrived, we celebrated as if there had been an addition to our family. For months they sat in the house, carefully leaning against the wall in the room where my grandfather sat and wrote letters. I asked if I could help saw them. The old man shook his head. It was much too soon to talk about such things, he said. The boards needed to get accustomed to the place; they weren’t used to the climate, to the way we talked, to our dreams. The wood had to feel rested and comfortable, then it would be ready. Finally, on a spring afternoon nearly four months after our “guests” arrived, he said it was time. When I asked what he was going to make out of the boards, he looked surprised. “How would I know? The wood and I have to decide together, don’t we? Don’t think you can just impose your will on things. Don’t listen to this talk you’re hearing these days about man being at the center of creation. Wood doesn’t know about politics. And thank goodness for that.” It turned out that the beech wanted to be part of a chair. I only sat in it once, before my grandfather gave it away, a present to a friend in the army, a man with a long title and a nice office. When I went to visit him a few years after my grandfather died, he had disappeared, as had the chair.

The two beech trees had been cleared away. From the pale light of the single streetlight, I could see a little sawdust on the road, but nothing else. I walked down the hill again to town, figuring I’d sit in a quiet bar until it was time to go meet my brother. If anyone was following me, they would just have to wander around a bit or find a place to relax until I set off for Coppet. I wasn’t sure where Coppet was, but I wasn’t going to let my brother know that. It would give him too much satisfaction, dictating directions to me. It was bad enough he just assumed that I would accept a summons to meet him someplace out of town at 1:00 A.M. The only thing worse was that he was right.

I had been given a pocket map of Geneva before I left Pyongyang; I’d check it as soon as I found a place to sit down. It was an old map made in Hungary. Sohn had handed it to me with an odd look on his face. “What makes them think you’ll find this of any use,” he said, “I’ll never understand. It’s probably what Geneva looked like during the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Let’s hope it’s better than nothing.”

A woman in high heels, spikes that could go through your heart, passed me when I turned onto a main street in search of a café. She was blond, Russian, a face like a fox, though I don’t imagine a fox, even in a leather skirt, looks that way from the back. When she walked up to a man standing on the corner, it was clear they knew each other already. He put his arm around her waist. She drew away, just a tiny gesture, then settled against him. She doesn’t like him, I thought. Maybe she’ll murder him tonight, with those stiletto heels.

Coppet was quiet and dark. A figure in a beret and a belted coat came out of a doorway and fell into step with me. “Lonely?”

It was M. Beret. I couldn’t see his face, but the voice, even with just that one word, was unmistakable.

“No, not if you’re not,” I said. I kept walking.

“It would be better if you stayed in your plain little hotel, don’t you think? Things can happen to people at this hour, even in Switzerland.”

“I felt restless, that’s all. Against one of your tidy laws?”

Another man came out from a darkened doorway, turned suddenly, and walked quickly away.

“Friend of yours?” M. Beret stopped and pulled a small pistol from his pocket. Then he spoke softly into a tiny radio. I stopped, too, and looked for a convenient place to hide if someone started shooting. Whatever this was, it wasn’t my fight, not as far as I knew. “You’ll remember”—M. Beret sounded somewhat annoyed—“I said that you’d be like a flower attracting bees. Well, that was a bee. You should stay off the phone; too many people on the other end.”

“I wasn’t on the phone, but I’ll bear it in mind. You wouldn’t know any bars around here, would you? Now I’m not so restless, but I’m getting thirsty. Walking at night does that to me.”

“Are you kidding? Nothing is open at this hour. Your brother isn’t here, if that’s who you’re looking for.”

I digested this.

“He had too much to drink at dinner, and his friends carried him back to his hotel on Rue Puits-St-Pierre. Not a very friendly man, your brother. He seems to think highly of himself, though; keeps his clothes clean and pressed.” M. Beret stared at my shoes, which were well worn. “He’s staying in a pretty nice place, not like the cracker box you’re in.” We had resumed walking, with less of a sense of urgency. M. Beret looked at me sideways. “You mad because I’m criticizing a family member?”

“I’m just thirsty.”

“I suggest you try the bottled water in your hotel. That’s all my budget will support tonight.”

“You’re not bamboo, you can’t just bend in the wind. You’re flesh and blood, much as you hate to admit it. And you will bleed like the rest of us when it comes to that.”

“I’m surprised you even recognize the concept of bending, or stopped long enough to look at bamboo, for that matter.”

My brother was still pale from too much alcohol, but nothing seemed to affect his air of nasty superiority. “I found out a little about what you’re doing here,” he said. “It’s crap.”

“In contrast to your mission, no doubt one of extreme urgency—so urgent that you had to drink yourself into a coma.” His hotel room was bigger than mine. The bed was large enough for a whole family. I looked into the bathroom. A nice bar of soap. A little bottle of shampoo. Fresh towels everywhere. M. Beret was right, my hotel didn’t measure up to this.

“I’m not answerable to you, or to anyone that you will ever deal
with. Don’t forget that.” My brother slumped against the wall and closed his eyes. “Did you wait for me in Coppet?”

“Briefly. I was joined not only by an unknown figure that walked quickly into the shadows but also by the Swiss service, which already knew you were falling-down drunk and wouldn’t show up.” I gave him an extra few seconds for that information to get past the last vestiges of alcohol before continuing. “They don’t like us.”

My brother laughed, softly. “No one likes us. Fuck them all.”

“Yes, but they all have food. Perhaps you’re too busy drinking to notice.”

“Food?” His eyes opened slightly. “Is that what you’re here for, to crawl and beg for food? I’ll bet that bastard Sohn is behind this. Sure, he picked you for the annoyance factor. He knew you’d run into me out here. He must have planned it. This is his way of getting my goat. He didn’t mention I’d be here, did he?”

“You two don’t get along, I take it.” My estimation of Sohn was climbing with every throb in the vein in my brother’s forehead.

“Sohn has no authority to send people like you overseas. None. Pretty soon, he won’t have the authority to flush the toilet. Let me see your orders.”

“Impossible.”

“Let me see them.”

“I don’t have any. Can you believe it? Completely paperless.” I held up two empty hands. He didn’t have to hear about Sohn’s instructions to me. They weren’t written down, so they weren’t exactly orders. “My orders were transmitted directly to the mission, apparently. I’ve never seen them.” This was true. “No one bothered to tell me until I arrived that I’m here as part of the delegation to the talks.” Not true, but the truth was none of his business. “How do you like that? Your brother, the diplomat.”

“You?” He snorted. “You? You don’t know the first thing about diplomacy.” The phone rang. My brother cursed and grabbed it. “What is it?” He listened. “Alright, as many loaves as you can get. Yes, bakery bread is best. Yes, immediately.” He slammed down the receiver. “I can’t talk to you right now. Meet me tonight.” He wrote an address on a piece of paper and stuffed it in my pocket.

“This time you show up, you hear me? I’m not at your beck and call.” I was at my limit. Five minutes was the maximum I could take, talking to him. “And make sure you pick a spot that won’t be swarming with police.” Whatever he was doing here, it was something that had to be conducted in code. My brother didn’t like bread, not of any kind.

“Did anything happen?” The meeting had just ended. It had gone on for a little more than two hours. I spent most of the time watching the pale light from the bank of windows that stretched along the opposite wall. Curious, I thought, the way nature provided for eyelids, but not lids for the ears. Ear lids could have been hidden, so no one would have known. When you shut your eyes, it was obvious to everyone. But ear lids could have been covert. With your eyes open but your ears closed, you could have sat for hours with no one the wiser.

Short of going into a trance, it was impossible to shut out the drone of the negotiations. Their side said something, then our side said something else. Yes, no, not at all, let me repeat, just in case you misunderstand, I’ll say it once again if it would help, we seem to be going over the same ground, perhaps we should take a break. If progress was a rabbit, it was nailed through both feet to the middle of the big table between the two delegations. It was going nowhere.

Mr. Roh closed his notebook. “Happen? We got through another session, and nothing went wrong. That’s in the target area. It got us to lunch, which means we have a three-hour respite from more lectures about how we shouldn’t be faxing blueprints to anyone the Americans don’t happen to like.”

“You’re not telling me we’re going to meet again today?”

“My, oh my, you really were tuned out, weren’t you? We agreed to resume at three o’clock. Meanwhile, we’re supposed to pretend to be contacting Pyongyang for instructions. They’re supposed to pretend they are waiting for us to consider their latest offer. In addition, they graciously invited us to a reception at five thirty. That means more
crackers and bits of dry cheese. Don’t worry, we’ll make excuses for your not attending.”

“I’m sure no one will miss me.” In the first blush of battle, I had insisted to the delegation leader I needed to attend all of the functions. Such foolishness.