“Ever seen him before?”
“No.”
“Ever heard of a place called Club Blue?”
“Once or twice. You want to take me there?”
“Not your style. Anyway, I’m too old for places like that.” I stretched my arm along the back of the bench; someone looking might have thought I had my hand on her shoulder. “Good job, though a report a little earlier might have helped. Anything else?”
“Don’t patronize me, Inspector.” She stood up. “You know your trouble?”
“No, but I guess you’re about to tell me.”
“You want people to think you’re April, but you’re actually August.”
The moon had come out from behind the lingering clouds, and I could see her face in profile. She was looking at the stars. My palms were sweating.
“I’ve got a few other tidbits, but they go to the highest bidder. And you”—she looked good in pale moonlight, I noticed—“don’t even come close. Good night.” The sound of her footsteps faded quickly. I listened to the river for a while, heard the murmur of a couple sitting nearby, gentle laughter, like music, then wondered what life would be like if I paid less attention to details.
In the morning, Min appeared at the door to my office. He wore the expression of a dog hoping for a kind word. “How is everything, Professor?” You could almost hear the sound of his tail thumping against the floor.
I was reading something complicated and didn’t look up for fear of losing my place. “Everything’s fine.” It was the closest I could get to saying, “Go away,” and that wouldn’t have done any good.
“Progress?”
“Some.” I picked the book off the desk and propped it up in front of me.
Silence, but not because he had left. “Dammit, Inspector, what is so important that you can’t talk?”
I marked the page with a pencil check and put down the copy of the Criminal Code that I was trying to digest. “I’m doing background research. It’s something insignificant, probably, but I thought I’d try to figure out exactly what law these bank robbers broke.”
“Who cares? That’s not our job. Leave the details to the procurators. Just find the bastards.”
“You mean, keep going on the case?”
“Didn’t I just say find the bastards?”
It wasn’t the unambiguous set of orders I was looking for, but it would have to do for now. “Alright, here’s my thought. If I can figure out what law they broke, maybe I can put some pressure on accomplices, or abettors—as they are referred to in this.” I held up the book. “If you abet a crime, you’re liable to several years of labor correction, unless you confess or repent or didn’t know you were involved. But to prove you didn’t know you were involved, you have to give some indication of what it was that was going on so you can indicate how it was you knew nothing about it.”
“All true, Inspector, but given that we have a deadline staring us in the face, I don’t think we have time for these subtleties.”
“Just listen, it gets better. If I can find an abettor and put on a little heat, I can press him to prove why he shouldn’t be charged with not acting to prevent the crime.”
“He’ll just say he didn’t know about it until afterward.”
“Then he should have reported it,” I said. Min could have at least expressed appreciation for my effort.
“Inspector, I don’t want to know who abetted in the crime, I want to know who committed it, who planned it, who led it, and where the hell he is now.”
“What if the ringleader is the stiff who ended up in the morgue?”
“Tell me, Inspector O, that you don’t really believe any such thing. Ringleaders don’t step in front of buses. They tend to be survivors, and smarter than the people beneath them.”
“They just might step in the street if they have no reason to believe a bus will be coming; if they have been watching the bank for weeks and never saw a bus on that street; if they have timed it so they will be picked up by a car at the very moment when a bus occupies the same spot in space and time.”
“You’re making this all up, aren’t you? Or do you have something new from the traffic people?”
“They weren’t going to give me anything. Nothing but a pat on the head and an invitation to leave. Li might get them to be more
cooperative. But think about it, what are the odds a bus would have appeared just at that moment? Buses don’t go that route; I did some checking with the people in the neighborhood. Once in a while army trucks use the street, but mostly as a place for the drivers to stop and smoke.”
“So, you are making this up.”
“No, it’s not fantasy.”
“What do you call it?”
“Surmise.” I threw the Criminal Code onto a copy of the Ministry regulations. It slid onto the floor.
Min pulled at his ear, then walked away without comment. A few minutes later, the phone rang. I knew what it was. “Yeah?”
“Don’t answer the phone that way, Inspector. What if it was somebody important?” He paused. “I mean . . . ”
“Never mind, I know what you mean.”
“Well, come in here, then. We need to talk.”
I put down the phone and frowned. It sometimes occurred to me that Min’s compulsion to call me into his office when he could just finish a conversation standing at my door wasn’t voluntary behavior on his part. Maybe it was a defect that had crept into the Min clan at the dawn of time, when the first Min male grunted and sweated while his bride shut her eyes and considered suicide. Maybe it was a trait that wouldn’t fall away, strengthened through intermarriage over the centuries until it was dominant in a whole layer of the population, like having a narrow nose or crooked teeth. Then again, maybe not. Maybe it was an idea, an impulse imparted from a childhood experience that just grew on Chief Inspector Min over the years like a wart. Who knew? I shrugged as I walked down the hall. At this late point in Min’s evolution, it couldn’t be helped.
As soon as I arrived at his doorway, he waved me in.
“A British official is coming to town, Inspector.”
“Bully for us.”
“We are assigned to security detail. The written orders will arrive tomorrow morning. The visitor will be here next week. We are in
charge of presecurity checks of the schedule, and then we have to coordinate with the Traffic Bureau to keep the route clear from the airport to the hotel.”
“Easy, we can do that with our eyes closed.” Not really. I’d made a few enemies in the Traffic Bureau lately. “But it takes time, just filling out all the necessary forms. If I have to do that, I can’t work on the bank robbery, too.” Maybe I could get away from the robbery case after all. Visitors required a lot of effort, especially Westerners. “You could assign someone else to the security detail.”
“Like who?”
“There are other people in this office.” Not really. “How about Yang?” I knew Min would hate the idea.
“Don’t be absurd, Inspector. The man wouldn’t know how to behave. He’d have tears streaming from everyone’s eyes before you knew it. This is supposed to be a goodwill visit. No, not Yang, and not his tall friend, either. We can’t have someone on a security squad who walks like a circus bear.”
“Most of SSD does.”
“Forget SSD. This is Ministry business, and we’re going to do it right.”
“Implying what?”
“Implying nothing. I want a dignified, invisible security detail working this visit. That means you.”
“Where will you be hiding?”
“I’ll be here, coordinating, keeping the paperwork in order, that sort of thing. If necessary, we’ll hold Yang in reserve should anything come up, but you are the most experienced in field operations. Besides, you’ve been abroad and understand how to deal with those people.”
“What people?”
“You know”—he paused before saying the word—“foreigners. There is something about them, they are always so demanding, never satisfied. It’s hard to grasp the problem, actually.”
“What else?”
“What else, what?”
“What else do you want? This isn’t just about a security detail. It’s about the robbery, isn’t it?”
“Let’s go down to your office.”
“Why?”
Min stood up and looked out the window at the Operations Building. “It’s easier to talk in your office. I like the view better.”
We walked down the hall in silence. I sat down at my desk. Min leaned against the wall. “As a matter of fact, the British ambassador was complaining at the Foreign Ministry yesterday that British businessmen who had accounts in the bank were being harassed by the police. It’s not us, so it must be SSD. We need to show them that we do not harass people, and we certainly don’t harass investors. You can do that, Inspector. People respond well to you, somehow. If this British official’s trip goes well, it will be a plus for everyone.” He cocked an eyebrow slightly, to indicate this included the two of us.
The phone rang in Min’s office. It rang three times and stopped. Then it started ringing again. Min gave me a funny look. “That’s not normal.” He went down the hall, walking with an agitated gait. A minute later, he was back at my door. His color wasn’t good.
“You want to sit down?” I pointed at the chair next to my desk.
Min shook his head. “Inspector, that was SSD.”
“It can’t be all that bad. Han and I haven’t argued, not overly, and when we parted, we parted on good terms, I think.”
“It’s not the robbery. SSD has information.” He stopped. He gave no indication that he intended to continue until I said my line.
“And what was the information?”
“An attempt will be made on the life of the British official, on our visitor, on the very man you are assigned to guard.”
I considered the idea. “That I doubt,” I said finally. “SSD is just having one of its crazy nightmares. It’s a natural result of trying to digest too much bad information, like getting heartburn. Don’t get yourself riled up.”
“No, this is good information. It was picked up by another service, in a third country. It was passed to us recently, they said, in the past
week. They’ve been checking it, checking the source, checking the channel. They think it’s believable.”
“They don’t like working with the Chinese, so it’s probably Russian. How good could it be? How come this information comes in at exactly the same time we learn about the visitor? Who could have planned an attempt on the life of someone we didn’t even know was coming? Isn’t it a little too convenient?”
Min shook his head. “Damnation, Inspector, every time I say something, you contradict me. I’m in no mood for that. This was from an SSD contact I trust, alright? If I say I trust him, then I trust him, and I don’t need your observations to the contrary.”
“Fine. So a trusted source told you about a plot. So your trusted source just found out about it himself. What if we simply accept the information and pronounce it good? Then what? Then we have to conclude that it lets us out of the game of the security detail. You want me to guess? Someone really didn’t want us in the middle anyway, because we don’t deal with assassinations, coups, or—”
“Who said anything about a coup, Inspector?” Min’s voice was low and very controlled. He moved over to my desk and leaned down so his face was nearly level with mine. “You will never say anything like that again in my presence, never, ever. Ever.” He straightened up slowly, his round eyes intensely black. “There’s no stepping back from that line, Inspector. You went over it, now you live there. If the question ever comes up, if I’m ever asked, I didn’t hear you say it. But I won’t wave good-bye as the truck drives you to the mountains. Try and remember that.”
I sat, stunned. Not at Min, at myself. I knew better than to talk about a coup. I knew better than even to think the word. It didn’t only endanger me, it endangered everyone around me, anyone who even looked at me in the street. Min walked out the door like a ghost, without a sound.
I didn’t leave the office that night. I wasn’t hungry and I wasn’t tired. I just sat at my desk, asking myself again and again, why had I mentioned a coup? The pressure must be at the breaking point. Or
worse, my subconscious had spotted something and was screaming at me to pay attention. Min was right; at this rate, my subconscious was going to get me sent to away to a camp in the mountains, if not actually stood up against a wall. Yang came in once to ask if anything was wrong, but I only looked at him blankly. He shrugged and went down the hall. I heard his door close, and then it was quiet.
T
he next morning, Min came up the stairs at seven o’clock. He walked by my office without looking in. I heard him open the file cabinets at the end of the hall and then the sound of him humming. A few minutes later, he walked back. This time he stopped at my door. “Good morning, Inspector.” He smiled and pointed out the window. “Beautiful spring day, fresh air, not a cloud on the horizon.” He smiled again. “Makes you glad to be alive. Had a good night?” There was no touch of irony in his voice. He sounded completely free of worry.
“Yes, great night.” I raised my head and searched his face with bleary eyes.
“Good. Let’s go over the bank robbery in about an hour, sort of put it in order. Then we can work on the security detail, nothing elaborate. Fine by you?” Min was practically bouncing on his toes, he was so full of good cheer.