“Who knew?” I was sitting in a chair-not the green one, which had been moved to the other side of the room-in front of Kim’s desk while he chewed on pencils. “You could certainly argue that it was a day bad for somebody’s health.”
“I don’t think he just keeled over.”
“He didn’t keel over. He didn’t even slump. He was sitting up.”
“How did they do it?”
“How did who do what? I don’t have any idea what happened to him. All I know is that he sat down at one o’clock and by one twenty he wasn’t going anywhere.”
“They must have killed him.” Kim looked worried. “Why would they do that? He must have known something that he wasn’t supposed to know. Either that or he had plans to jump ship and they needed to stop him.”
“I doubt either one of those. I also doubt that SSD killed him. They don’t do that to their own people. It’s very bad for morale.”
“Maybe you were wrong. Maybe he wasn’t one of theirs.”
“Then whose was he?”
“I don’t know. It was in his file, but the file is gone.”
“Gone. Mislaid, I suppose.”
“Files do disappear sometimes, Inspector. This is a secure facility. I don’t think anyone here made off with it.” Kim was looking more worried by the second. The more he said out loud all of the reasons everything was all right, the more he realized that things were starting to go bad. “We’ll have to do an autopsy. That will tell us the cause of death. The police can take it from there.”
“The police? You really don’t understand this place yet, do you? The police won’t have anything to do with a dead SSD agent.”
“They won’t? Then who will investigate?”
“That’s a good question, Major. If he died of a heart attack, everyone will breathe a sigh of relief, because a big red check can go in the box on the file that says: ‘No Further Investigation Necessary.’ If his heart stopped for unexplained reasons, no one will answer the phone when you call.”
“What do we do? Forget it happened?”
“No, you keep it in mind at all times.”
“Was it a threat?”
“Against you? Not likely. They’re not going to threaten you. They aren’t sure who is going to come out on top. What if you emerge as top dog? They don’t want to be on your bad side.”
“They want to be on my good side. Then why murder that agent?”
“Fair enough: Why murder that agent? It could be they need you to keep some distance. Remember I told you to call off the operation? Actually, I don’t think they meant to kill their man to make that point. I think they meant to kill someone else.”
“You?”
“Could be. The question is, why?”
“Don’t they realize that killing you wouldn’t have mattered to me?”
“That helps.”
“They must think you’re working for me.”
“Or something.” It could be that. More likely, they got wind of my meeting with Kang in Prague.