That evening, Colonel Pang met me near the Taedong River. He left a message at the front desk that he would be across from the monument at dusk and that perhaps we should try getting acquainted under better circumstances than we had the first time. Kim obviously didn’t like him, and neither did Zhao. If the enemy of my enemy was my friend, that seemed to go double for Pang. I decided it was worth finding out what was on his mind.
“I’m sorry you got mixed up with Zhao,” he said. “I should have warned you.”
“Do you have a free pass across the border? How did you get here?”
“The border isn’t much of problem these days, Inspector. You could go out and come back all without a passport if you wanted to.”
“I’d rather not get my shoes wet.” I could see that he had two bodyguards with him. One was about ten meters ahead; the other was the same distance behind. “Are we going to hold the entire meeting here, or should we walk a little, to give the SSD teams some exercise?”
“Either way. I like rivers. They are unambiguous dividing points. There is nothing uncertain about where you stand in relation to a river. You’re either on this side or that. Borders shift around; rivers are usually more permanent. Don’t look now, but up ahead on that bench is one of Zhao’s men. It’s his number three, a real viper. From what the coroner in Shenyang tells me, he spits poison in the eyes of his victims.”
“Why, I don’t know, but a lot of people seem to want to be helpful these days, giving me warnings. Let me return the favor. You ought to know-if someone hasn’t made this clear already-that Zhao is not going to throw you a birthday party this year.”
Pang moved his head and put his finger on a scar that went vertically down the left side of his throat. “This was not from a love bite, Inspector. The key point to understand at the moment is that Zhao doesn’t want us cooperating.”
“We’re not.”
“Zhao doesn’t know that. No one who sees us walking together at sunset along the river would know that.” Pang smiled at me. A person might think it was a pleasant smile. A person might even forget about the hole in the captain’s head.
“How do you suppose that Zhao knows that I am going to Macau?”
“Zhao knows a great deal. That shouldn’t surprise you, Inspector.”
“Who told him?”
“He goes into a lot of offices during the course of a day, as you know.”
“True, it could have been Major Kim, but it could as easily have been you. You knew about it even before I did.”
“Why would I want to tell Zhao anything?”
“That’s what I’m wondering.”
“Good, keep wondering.” As we passed the viper, Pang smiled again-well this side of pleasant-and said something in a Chinese dialect that threw hatchets. The security man in front of us had stopped and watched closely, his right hand in his jacket pocket. “I mentioned that I’d heard about his mother and turtles. I don’t think he liked it.” Pang looked at his watch. “I have an hour or two to kill, Inspector; would you care to join me for a drink? Don’t worry. I don’t shoot people at close range. There’s no challenge to it.”
“In that case,” I said, “I accept.”
Pang ran up a flight of stone steps that led away from the river. At the top of the steps a car waited, its engine running. “There’s a place north of the city, not very far away. We’ll be back at the hotel before anyone misses you. Please, get in.”