Bamboo and Blood (26 page)

“Amazing, you sound just like Sohn, Inspector,” said the man with the napkin. By now he had fashioned it into a hand puppet, though I didn’t recognize the shape. “It’s a dog,” he said when he saw my questioning look, “though it appears to have lost a leg. You’ve never seen a three-legged dog? They seem to adapt rather well, though they can be painful to watch.” I glanced around the table, but none of the others gave anything away.

“Adaptation has never been my best quality,” I said. “If you want me to pass a message to Sohn, you’d damn well better have a convincing explanation for why I disappeared.” I didn’t need authorization to carry a message to Sohn. They knew that perfectly well.

“So, you agree to pass the message?”

“I imagine that is the only way I’ll get out of here.”

“Goodness, no, Inspector. We’re not going to carry you away wrapped in a rug.” The man to my left snorted.

“Let’s get on with it.” A short, bald man walked in and sat down. The others nodded at him. “I ask only that you listen closely, Inspector.” He turned his full attention to me. “When I’m finished, if you have any questions about what I have said, you should ask them then. Understood?”

It wasn’t an order or a threat, nothing peremptory about it. He seemed like a man under a lot of pressure and in need of a good night’s sleep. “I’m listening,” I said.

“Good. Sohn must have told you we have been meeting with him, or with people attached to him, for quite a while. We’ve been dancing around each other, but there isn’t time to dance anymore.” I put aside the mental picture of Sohn’s little ears dancing in the desert at dusk. “Let me be blunt. We don’t want our neighbors buying missiles from you.” I assumed he didn’t mean me personally. “You, of course, don’t care what the buyers do with the missiles, as long as you are paid. You need the money from those sales, and if the sales stop, Sohn has made it very clear to us, you must have something to fill the vacuum. It’s not a difficult equation to solve. We do our part, you do yours.” He poured me a glass of wine, and then one for himself. “There is a little complication, however—the negotiations you are currently holding in Geneva.” He took an orange from the fruit bowl, examined it closely, then put it back. “A decent orange cannot be such a difficult thing to find in this country,” he said to the others in English. “Or am I wrong?” Nobody said a word.

“So far,” I said when it seemed that if I didn’t break the silence, we would be sitting all night contemplating fruit, “I haven’t heard a message.”

“That’s because I’m not quite there, Inspector.” The bald man rummaged through the bowl and emerged with a plum. He polished it. He held it up to the light. “Do you like plums, Inspector? Do you know what happens to a plum when it is dried? It becomes a prune. Same thing happens with countries. When they dry up, they are only good for shit.”

Ahmet smiled absently into the fireplace. The others watched me with interest. I may have flushed, but I was determined not to let him win the point. “Maybe that sort of thing works with Arabs,” I said evenly, “or with what’s left of the Ottoman Empire. Don’t try it with me.” Ahmet’s smile dimmed slightly, but I could tell it didn’t break his concentration on which of my body parts to add to next week’s lamb sausage.

The bald man bit into the plum. He said something to the others in a language that came from the back of his throat, and they nodded. “Very well, Inspector. We get down to business.” The plum had dripped onto his chin. He ignored it. “The talks you are holding. I’ll be blunt. They are a problem for us if they make progress.”

“I don’t think there’s much danger of that.”

“You may not think so. We do not think so. But things sometimes take an odd bounce in these talks. Do you play soccer?”

“Too much running around,” I said.

“Then you know what I mean. An odd bounce in a game that seems to be going nowhere, and suddenly someone makes a goal. If your talks should suddenly make a goal, that would be a problem.” He finally reached up and wiped away the drop of plum juice. “Like watching dirt on another man’s face.”

Sohn had sent me out to talk to the Americans in Geneva; instead I was somewhere in France—or Italy, if they were to be trusted—sharing a fruit bowl with Mossad. Sohn didn’t make mistakes. I was here because he wanted me to end up here. When he played soccer, I had a feeling, the ball only bounced where he wanted it to. “If the talks succeed,” I said, “it will stop our missile sales to your neighbors. I take it that isn’t what you really want, even though you say that it is.”

“To the contrary, it is very much what we want. And as you know, we are prepared to invest quite a bit in your country if we can be sure we are getting what we need. We want those missile transfers to stop, not slow down, not be rerouted. We want them to stop. But if the talks succeed, that will not happen. Why? Because you don’t trust the Americans, your side will probe for the seams in an agreement.”

Ahmet hissed through his false teeth.

“The deal will fall through sooner or later; and we will end up losing a lot of precious time on the problem. If the talks succeed, by which is commonly understood you sign something and drink a glass of champagne, we will be put on the sidelines and told not to interfere. Meanwhile, and this is our estimate, so please contradict me if you think we are wrong, your own situation will not improve. You will gain nothing from the negotiated deal, and the money you earn from sales elsewhere, even from your old customers, will become a pittance because no one will trust you anymore as a supplier. How can anyone sign a contract with someone who takes their money and then negotiates away the deal, tears it up for diplomatic gain? They barely trust you as it is. You see my point.” He didn’t wait for me to respond. “So it comes down to this: Would your side rather deal with someone who can deliver, or someone
who can’t? That’s the choice. That’s the message that we want you to pass to Sohn.” He threw the plum pit into the fireplace and walked out of the room without saying good night.

“Don’t turn around, but that is probably one of your M. Beret’s boys who just swung in behind us.”

“Why do you keep calling him ‘my’ M. Beret? He isn’t mine. If anything he’s yours. You’re the one who dined with him last night. I didn’t even eat.” I could see headlights in the rearview mirror.

Jenö accelerated slightly and turned into the narrow street. “I’ll drop you just past that warehouse, up there, on the right. You’ll have to jump out while the car is moving. Are you trained for that?” It wasn’t a skill we used in Pyongyang, but that was no business of Mossad.

“See you around,” I said and reached for the door handle.

“You might want to release your seat belt first, Inspector.”

“European sequencing,” I said. Fortunately, we had slowed enough so that when I jumped out, I only stumbled against a lightpost and fell into a pile of boxes. Jenö?s car disappeared; the one that had been following us squealed around the corner and roared past.

When I limped in the front door of my hotel, M. Beret was sitting with a book in his lap, dozing. He looked up when the door clicked shut.

“Ah, Inspector. Alarm bells have been ringing. Your mission is in an uproar wondering where you are. The talks were recessed and angry words have been exchanged. Your side says you have been kidnapped. Quite exciting. And you? Been skiing on the Italian side?”

“I don’t ski.”

“Then you must have bruised your shoulder jumping from a car. It takes practice.”

“How would you know if I bruised my shoulder?”

“You’re limping like a bird with a sprained wing.”

“I’m tired, if you don’t mind. I’d like to get some sleep. Will you do me a favor and tell my mission that I was knocked unconscious in a
disco and nearly suffocated in the crush of young, sex-starved bodies, but that I’m alright now?”

“Of course, Inspector, that is probably as believable as anything.” He closed his book and watched me climb the stairs. “How was the lamb, by the way?”

“Good night, monsieur.”

I heard him move softly to the door.

“The talks are locked up. We have no instructions; none will show up until we have sent back a good explanation for where you have been.” The security man at the mission was pasty-faced and nervous. He had already smoked two cigarettes and was fumbling to light a third. The ambassador sat quietly to the side. His aide was taking copious notes, though since nobody was saying much, it was hard to see what there was to record so far. Long silences can speak volumes, but it can be tricky getting them down on paper. When I first joined Pak’s section, I would polish my interrogation reports for hours, noting everything. Remarks, silences, facial tics—everything. Eventually, Pak told me that the Ministry had requested we submit something shorter. No more than one page for each report. “Boil it down,” they told him. I told Pak we’d lose the nuance. He laughed. “Keep a special folder for nuance, O. Once a year we’ll dump it out on your desk and sort through the pile.”

“We’re waiting, Inspector. You were gone for twenty-four hours. Thursday night to Friday night. Where were you?” I recognized the man talking as the driver who met me at the airport when I arrived. In
this room, he didn’t look like a driver anymore, or sound like one. The security man observed him sourly.

Interesting, I thought. “Turkish food,” I said. “Since I was told not to attend Thursday night’s dinner with the delegation, I went out for Turkish food. I think I drank too much of that ugly liquor of theirs; when I came to, I was in a pile of boxes on a street near a nightclub. It was quite bizarre, actually. Hard to believe, but there you are. Keep away from that liquor, that’s my advice. If you don’t mind my asking, what do my drunken wanderings have to do with holding the negotiations? It’s not as if I add a lot to the discussions. I heard you accused them of kidnapping me. Why would they want to do that?”

The door opened, and a woman handed a sealed envelope to the ambassador. She waited while he signed a log. “I think this might save us some time,” he said. “Give me a moment to read it.” He carefully opened the envelope and looked at the single sheet of paper inside. “That’s clear enough,” he said when he had read it through twice. He looked at the man standing next to me. “No more questions.”

“What?” The security man ground out his cigarette. “Says who?”

The ambassador’s aide grimaced but didn’t stop writing. The ambassador folded the paper and put it back in the envelope. “Inspector, I am going to request that you be sent home immediately. That’s a formality. I don’t really require approval. I have good and sufficient reason to order you out on my own authority, even before I receive guidance from Pyongyang. Your brother and I had a conversation the other day, and now I see why he warned me against letting you stay. You are disrupting my operations here. Because I do not know what you are doing or why, I consider you a menace. The Swiss are also unhappy, and if they are unhappy, so am I. The last thing we can afford is to have the Swiss snapping at us. They don’t want a defection here; neither do I. It doesn’t matter what airplane leaves in the next three hours, or where it goes. I want you on it.”

Defection? Had my brother spread the word that I was thinking of defecting? There was a knock on the door, and the same woman came in with another envelope. The ambassador signed the log again, and this time ripped the envelope open. “Sons of bitches,” he muttered. The aide put down his pen.

“I take it the inspector should not pack his bags just yet.” The man who wasn’t really a driver didn’t sound surprised.

“Handwritten instructions from the Top.” The aide and the security man glanced nervously heavenward. “He stays.” The ambassador gave me a malign look. I didn’t know him at all; our paths had never crossed before, and if he had passed through my sector in Pyongyang, I hadn’t noticed. But he definitely didn’t like me. “There are wheels spinning, Inspector. I strongly advise you stay clear of things that don’t concern you.” He paused. “Mountain lakes are deep, just remember that. Perhaps it would be good for you to start wearing your badge. It might help with identification.” The aide closed his notebook and slipped out of the room. The ambassador turned to a young woman who had been lounging near the window. “The talks should resume the day after tomorrow. Have the delegation pass a message to the other side tomorrow morning telling them we have new instructions. Let them fuss with that idea for twenty-four hours. Don’t say anything about the reappearance of the wanderer.” Another malign look was flung in my direction.

In the hallway, I passed Mr. Roh. It was time for our talk. “I’m going out for some fresh air,” I said. “I hear the fountain in the park, the one near the rose garden, is nice in the afternoon light.” He nodded and kept walking.

A smart young man—that was what I concluded when I saw Roh sitting on one of the white benches beside the fountain about an hour later. Smart, a little reckless, maybe a potential security risk. That’s how it would go down in his file if anyone spotted him here talking to me. A security risk because he was out meeting with a security person from another office without checking first with his own. And I knew he hadn’t checked with his own, because they never would have let him come here alone to sit with me. So he was a risk, and it wasn’t my worry. It meant he’d answer some questions, as long as I gave him a comfortable lead-in. His head was down and he might have been reading the book in his lap. But he wasn’t; he was waiting. As soon as he heard my steps on the gravel path, he looked up.

“Nice weather,” I said. “A good day to sit underneath pine trees.”

“This could get me into a lot of trouble,” he said. “The word going around the halls is, the ambassador doesn’t like you.”

“But you decided it was worth the risk. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here.”