The Irishman reached over turned off the tape recorder. "All stop. I'm not paid to go on any train trips. I told you, we're supposed to be talking about Kang."
"Relax, Richie. I'm getting you there."
"I'm relaxed. You're the one whose fingers are drumming on the table."
"I didn't know the Irish were so observant."
"I hadn't heard Koreans were so transparent." He stood up from the couch and stretched. "Seems like a lot of people in your country talk quietly."
I didn't say anything.
"Any special reason? Fear, maybe? Must be a quiet place."
"I realize some cultures see a virtue in being boisterous. We don't. Public decorum has a lot to recommend it."
"Especially if you need to be invisible." The Irishman pointed to the wall. "See that clock? It says 2:40. Know why? After a while, they figure maybe you won't realize how much time has passed. They figure you won't be checking your watch. But I know you already did that, twice. Maybe you have an appointment, planning on meeting someone?" He waited, but I didn't, respond, so he went on. "Psychologically, it's supposed to be a good time for this sort of meeting-2:40, i mean. Midway to nowhere. You ever awake at that time of the morning? Gives me the shakes." Moving to the clock, he reset it to 11:15. "That's better, huh? You might say it's not long until lunch, or about time to cuddle, depending on your a.m. or your p.m."
He sat down again, this time at the other end of the couch. "Tell me about your chief inspector, Pak. I'm guessing he knows Kang better than you do."
"There's nothing to tell. Pak is dead." I felt the coffeepot. It wasn't even lukewarm. "Anyway, Pak is not your business."
"That so?" Lines creased his forehead, then went away. "Let's review, shall we? Kang is dead. Pak is dead. Everyone who touches you dies, is that it? Anyone else I should cross off my list?"
"Since when do you have a list?" I stood and wandered around the apartment. It was sterile; no one ever lived here. My little room back home had more character, though this one had the advantage of a lamp.
"Go ahead, get the urge to ramble out of your system. Feel better? Alright.
Forget Pak." The Irishman fiddled for a moment with the tape recorder.
He sighed and pounded his shoulder a few times. "Kim, give me something on Kim. You don't like him, I got that much. I take it he is still alive."
"A sad state of affairs, Richie, when men like Kim are left standing."
I sat down again and poured myself half a cup of coffee. It looked cold.
"Kim is a problem in search of a solution."
"Couldn't tell by me. So far, his only sin is a bad haircut."
The Inn of the Red Dragon in Kanggye was a two-story building that had given up the struggle with the weather. The roof sagged, its windows were cockeyed, and the exterior cement facing was chipped and cracking where it wasn't streaked with water stains. A few blocks east of the train station, the inn sat alone, across from the burned wreck of what used to be a clinic, according to a sign on the boarded-up door.
I had asked at the station whether there was an inn nearby. There were several, according to an old lady who leaned against the wall with a blanket spread in front of her, selling cigarettes stacked in two small pyramids-one Korean, one foreign-a circle of rice cakes, and a few pieces of fruit. A pile of party newspapers sat beside her; the one on top was old but in remarkably good shape, an edition for Kim II Sung's sixtieth birthday, dated April 15, 1972. She also had four or five children's books in English, brightly colored, one of them with a duck in pants and a hat on the cover.
"Buy an apple," she said. "You look hungry."
"Grandmother, I need to wash my face and go to sleep. Do you know where a poor boy can put his head down?"
"You want a girl?"
"Grandmother, look at me," I said. "First you offer me an apple, then a woman."
"Yeah, biblical, ain't it." She smiled, and her eyes disappeared in the wrinkles. I must have looked surprised, because she suddenly stopped smiling. "Don't worry, this isn't Pyongyang. Bibles around here come as thick as flies. Decent paper. Some people use it to wrap fish."
"And you?"
"I can read, can't I?"
"An inn, Grandmother."
"I know. There's three. Five actually, nearby, but two's not for you.
One of them, the White Azalea, is only for military, which you're not.
Then there's the Lotus. Very elite, for fine gentlemen from Pyongyang and foreigners." She looked at me. "Not you. Anyway, just between us, it's a dump. The party lets them charge through the sky, and for what?
The food stinks. The cook is crooked and only buys spoiled goods at a discount. They caught him once, but his uncle is someone important up there"-she pointed a finger into the air-"and he got let off with a warning." She laughed. "Big deal. A warning. They should have broiled his ass good." She paused and looked thoughtful. "You, you try the Red Dragon. Nothing fancy." She paused again. "I'm surprised you don't know much about Kanggye."
"Why would that be?"
"You look like one of General O Chang-yun's boys. Same eyes."
I shook my head. "Don't know any such man, but we've all got to have eyes, don't we, Grandma?"
As I walked up the hill to the inn, I tried to calculate the odds of the first person I met in this sorry city knowing my grandfather, General O, "Hero of the Struggle and Beating Heart of the Revolution," as they called him on the radio the day he died.