The office was large and deceptively plain, the sort of plain that comes only with careful thought. Nothing was there by chance, everything had a purpose, and the purpose of the whole was to make it clear that this was a place in which central levers of power were located. Here, the room announced, was not merely the appearance, not simply the trappings, but power in pure form. Pure power didn’t need elaborate decoration. A simple blade cuts clean. All right, I said to myself, we’re making progress-we know the man has power beyond making people nervous.
Major Kim sat behind a wooden desk so highly polished that I could see his reflection. It was a solid piece of furniture, quite heavy from the looks of it. The message was clear enough. The desk wasn’t going anywhere, and the man behind it was here to stay. The color of the walls was muted, the lighting subdued. The only jarring note I could see was the chairs. They were all different-different colors, different styles. In front of the major’s desk was a brown chair, high backed and without arms. It looked uncomfortable, and my guess was it was supposed to be. Slightly behind the brown chair and off to the side was one with a green velvet seat and a low wooden back. Oddly, it was turned away from the desk, facing a group of folding chairs that sat in a semicircle facing each other. Farthest back, next to the wall that held the room’s only window, was a lonely stack of black plastic chairs.
The man who had picked me up at the hotel had the air of a duty driver-cheerful, talkative, saying nothing. It was at least an hour before dawn, the streets were deserted, but every streetlight was on. We drove past apartment houses that had not been there the last time I was in Pyongyang, turned into a tunnel I never knew existed, and came out in a compound at the base of a wooded hill. There was a long walkway to a three-story building that had a heavy tank parked on either side. The barrel of the tank on the left followed our progress to the entrance. The driver escorted me past Security, up to the third floor, and all the way to Kim’s door. He knocked twice and then left me alone. More psychology. Did I want to wait until a voice told me to come in? Or did I want to push the door open on my own? I walked in. To hell with psychology.
Major Kim was pouring a cup of tea. “Ah, good morning to you, Inspector. I see you’re wearing a new shirt. It fits, I hope.” He looked at me carefully. “Yes, it does. The neck size is good? Sit, why don’t you?” He pointed to the brown chair. If I could see his reflection in the desk, he could see mine. He didn’t need to look up to know how I was reacting. “Here I have tea. We can enjoy some fish, a wonderful bowl of soup, and whatever else you might like.” He pressed a button under the desk.
“Is Michael on duty?” I glanced around the room. “Or will we have one of the morning crew? Paul, perhaps?”
A door off to the side opened and a middle-aged man in a suit and tie walked in. He eyed me briefly before turning his attention to Major Kim. “It’s not going to get any better if we continue to wait. You know that already, I assume.”
Kim took the top off the teapot and looked inside. “We have a meeting at nine o’clock.” He put the top back in place. “That’s why we call it a nine o’clock meeting.”
The man grimaced. “Your decision, of course.” He started out the door and nearly knocked over an aide carrying a tray.
“Paul.” I waved him in. “Good to see you. Put the things down and get out your notebook. Tomorrow, no four A.M. wake-up call, understood? Not four thirty, either. Let’s say nothing earlier than five o’clock. Go ahead, write it down; the major doesn’t object.”
Major Kim sniffed one of the dishes and handed it to the aide. “I don’t want this served ever again. Am I clear?” The aide nodded. “Good. And take note of the Inspector’s instructions about the wake-up call. If that’s what he wants, that’s what he gets.” The aide nodded again. “Dismissed,” said the major.
“Well,” said the major, after the aide had closed the door, “nothing here is easy. But then, there’s no reason to expect it should be. That’s part of the challenge. In case you’re wondering, the man in the suit is one of mine. The aide is one of yours.”
Mine. Yours. Marking territory, like a dog walking along the street. “A division of labor,” I said. “Very smart. Would you like me to haul a few buckets of water?” I looked around the room. “At the very least, let me arrange your chairs for the nine o’clock staff meeting.”
“Jumping to conclusions, aren’t we, Inspector?”
“You tell me.”
The major laid the dishes out on the desk. “Eat first, business later. I’m always hungry in the morning. You?”
“At my age, appetite is no longer central to existence. I don’t give it much thought anymore.”
“A weary thing to say, Inspector. You aren’t going to be glum all day long, I hope. We have a lot to accomplish, and we might as well be cheerful about it. If I weren’t careful, I could be depressed all the time, but what’s the use of that?”
“A new day dawns. The world is fresh, and yet we confront the same question as we did last night: What is this about?”
“Have some soup.”
“I don’t want soup. I want to know what this is about, because if I don’t find out damn soon, I’m leaving.” I didn’t think Kim would be fazed. He wasn’t.
“Leaving. Again. I would have told you last night, but you left in a hurry. Don’t press your luck, Inspector. I’d hoped to give you a lot of space to get used to things, but that’s not going to be possible.”
“I see.”
“No, I doubt that you do.” There was the tiniest flash of steel in his voice. “The fact is, from here on out, you are under my direct command. You take orders from me; you report to me; you jump when I tell you to jump.”
Really? What led him to believe such a thing? I’d just spent five years on a mountaintop not following anyone’s orders. I was going back in harness at the snap of his fingers? Not likely. “Yesterday, you were my insurance policy, my best pal. Now you are suggesting I am a draft animal. Something happen overnight?”
The major smiled obliquely; I checked off one of his thousand expressions. “I’m still your pal; don’t misunderstand. But I’ll crack your skull open and cook your brains for breakfast if you give me trouble. Is that clear?”
“Finally, we’re getting somewhere. Let me put two and two together. You’re from the South, as you told me last night. You seem to be under the impression that you are my superior. Streetlights are on everywhere. And the room maid addresses me as ‘sir.’ Shall I take a guess at what has happened? Or what might happen?”
“No. You won’t be doing any guessing, Inspector. There’s no margin here for that. I move according to stone-cold facts. And that’s what you will do from now on, too.” He shrugged. “Confused? I suggested to you last night that facts are inconvenient, but so is reality. Facts may be a problem, but reality is a killer. There’s no way around reality, in my experience. Admittedly, you seem to have spent a lifetime avoiding it.”