"He's dead." I was in Pak's office, squinting against the sun that bounced off the windows of the Operations Building across the way. The gingkoes in the courtyard were useless, weeks away from getting leaves that could soften the light. Worst of all, three months into the New Year, their branches had all the charm of dinosaur limbs. March is bad enough, my grandfather would say, without having to look at gingko trees.
"Really?" Shock registered in Pak's eyes. "What happened?" He wasn't feigning ignorance. I could see that he really didn't know, which meant the news hadn't gotten back here yet. Pak might be only a chief inspector, but no one had more lines out than he did. If Sohn's death had been reported, no matter in what channel, Pak would have known. Even if the news were closely held deep in the Center, Pak would find it.
"The Swiss are classifying it as an accident."
"By which I take it, you don't think so."
"I think he was murdered. That's what they suspect, too, only it would cause them too much trouble to say so."
"And why would you think this was murder?"
"For one thing, his neck was broken. That doesn't just happen. You can fall through a gallows' trapdoor, or off a horse, or out of a car, or down the stairs, but generally it isn't easy to break your neck all by yourself. If he fell, there would have been bruises. He didn't have any. None."
"How do you know?"
"I saw the body in the morgue."
"Why, the question will be asked, did Inspector O go to the Geneva morgue?"
"The mission doesn't want anything to do with bodies of any description. They said no one was missing from their roster, and they weren't going to the morgue to stare at an unidentified foreigner. In fact, they complained it was an insult, suggesting something had happened to one of the staff. The Swiss threw up their hands and asked me. I thought I owed it to Sohn. Someone did, anyway."
"So, just for the sake of argument, we'll assume you are right." I expected Pak to ask a lot of things, but not what came next. "Does that bother you, his being murdered?"
"Strange, the Swiss put the same question to me."
"And what did you reply?"
"I said I'd have to think about it. I'm still thinking, but I'm not sure I like having so many people interested in my personal reaction. What if I asked you the same thing?"
"I'd say I am bothered by it. I'd say Sohn was a good man. He grunted and barked at times, his ears were too small and the back of his head too pointed, but he was good to his people and he knew what needed to be done."
Nicely vague, that phrase-needed to be done.
"So, you knew him from before you joined the Ministry. I figured you did. There was something about the way you spoke to each other."
"It's been a while, but I don't think he had changed much."
"From what I could tell, he had a lot of enemies."
"These days, that's not hard to do. Even back then, he had the knack for it."
"The Swiss told me they saw him meeting Jeno last year."
"Good for them." Pak stood up. This time there was nothing special in his eyes. Maybe he wasn't surprised. "I feel like going for a long walk. Come along?"
As soon as we were out the gate and past the guards, it was clear Pak didn't want to talk. Silence was fine by me. I was disoriented, and it wasn't just lack of sleep. I couldn't place where I was. I'd only been away for a month, but the city had a strange feel. Everything about it was unfamiliar-the buildings, the air, the sounds. It was as if I hadn't really come back.
The afternoon was awfully cold. All of the stores were dark, and there weren't many people lined up waiting for buses. We walked for almost twenty minutes without saying a word; finally Pak stopped and turned to me. "It may not come up in the course of later conversation, so let me remind you that we are still supposed to be working on that case, the woman who was murdered."
"Welcome home, Inspector O," I said.
"No, I don't mean you have to start on it today."
"When?"
"Tomorrow. No one will call on Sunday. You can work uninterrupted."
"Anyone bother to look at the file while I was gone?" I'd come to a few tentative conclusions, but I wasn't going to share them just yet. I planned to sleep the whole day tomorrow. I could give my conclusions to Pak on Monday, tell him I'd spent all of Sunday developing them.
"We're still shorthanded. Besides, a lot happened while you were gone."
"Such as?"
"I don't know this, and because I don't know it, I would have no way of telling you about a surge of activity in Hwadae county. There haven't been enough out-of-channel orders sent to our people to suggest anything imminent. But we have noticed more visitors going up there than normal. An Iranian delegation went through Sunan about a week ago. A special Pakistani visitor flew in, too. Our nearest post has been told to keep well back and look the other way when the cars go through."
"Is that why Sohn got his neck broken?"
"Funny question. I don't think you need to generate new shoots," Pak said. "I think you need to go home and sleep long enough to get that dazed look off your face. I'll meet you tonight around nine o'clock, at the same place we had bark soup when you got back from New York. Can you find it?"
"I'm a detective, remember?"