"You hungry yet, Inspector?"
"It was your satellite dish, must have been. Your people were watching that highway. Or someone working for you. That radio scanner, in the black car the first time, it was yours, too?"
"Told you, I'm only a note taker. Mind if I fix a sandwich?" He walked into the kitchen and turned on the light. "Could make you a cup of tea-Irish tea, if you don't mind."
"I've had coffee already." I heard him grunt in disappointment. "Okay, I'll try the tea."
"I thought you liked tea."
"Lost my taste for it, I guess."
"Cream?"
"Cream! Are you kidding? How about whiskey? I thought that was how you people drank tea." I followed him to the kitchen.
"Some do. Not me. Cream and sugar." He turned to watch me for a moment, just long enough to make sure I'd stopped at the kitchen door.
"Only a habit, drinking tea like that, but it reminds me of home. You ever get lonely, Inspector, on the road?"
"Wouldn't you like to know. If I did, it would take a lot of loneliness for me to drink tea with cream and sugar." I took the cup from him and looked around the edge.
"No cranes, sorry."
"Tell me, Richie, why were your people watching the highway? Is that when I wandered into your sights? Were you expecting Kang to be out there?"
The Irishman cleaned the counter, washed his cup, and wiped the faucets and then the cupboard handles. "Three questions, for which you already realize you won't get answers. But you know what Kang was doing back there in Pak's office, don't you. He wanted to find out how much Kim knew. And, if Kang was operating true to form, he also wanted a good look at you. He'd been checking up, he told you that. But Kang doesn't trust paper or other people's reports. He wanted to see you for himself."
I gave a mock salute. "I am impressed. You are obviously thorough, a trait too often overlooked. You've been watching Kang awhile, I take it."
"Not long enough. We didn't know about Kim, but we knew Kang was worried. He was jumping around, moving his people and collecting his cash, folding up networks. We couldn't figure it out, until we got wind of this Japanese thing. Someone told me it looked like Kang was scared.
Didn't sound right to me."
"Kang wouldn't panic. He lacked that gene. Up in Manpo, he told me the deal with Japan was about to cause trouble internally. Do you know what he meant? Had you already figured out what he was doing on the border?"
"Let's just say we knew that a settlement between your country and Japan after all these years strikes a lot of people as inconvenient."
"They shouldn't worry."
"Oh?"
"Richie, compared with relations between my country and Japan, the Irish have a love affair with England. South Koreans, Chinese, Indonesians-no one likes the Japanese and no one ever will. I don't know why. Pak and I would talk about it sometimes. Pak said it was irrational."
"What happened to Pak? You said he's dead. How?"
"Ask Kim."
"Be serious." His phone rang; he answered it quickly. "I think so." He hung up. "You want to keep going?" He looked at his notebook, then frowned at the tape recorder. It had been running the whole time. "You had just seen a couple of cars."