PART IV
Chapter One
“You don’t seem to be on the ambassador’s good side.” The Man with Three Fingers had come up behind me across the grass. I hadn’t heard a thing. “You don’t seem to be on anyone’s good side, actually. Not that I’m surprised.”
“I’m enjoying the view and the air at the moment.” I resisted the urge to turn to face him. Better to act nonchalant, as if I had known the whole time he was there. “If you want to sit down, feel free. Otherwise, go get yourself a cup of espresso or something.”
He walked around and stood directly in front of me. “Admit it, O, you didn’t hear me creeping up behind you. I could have taken your head off and you wouldn’t have known it was happening until you saw your eyes staring up from the ground.” He flexed what remained of his hand. “I don’t want to sit down.”
“Then don’t.” I settled back on the bench. “Excuse me if I don’t get up.”
“You disappeared, but I know where you were.”
“That’s good, because I don’t have any idea.” I thought he meant the jazz club, or maybe even the place the music had taken me.
“You were chasing a delicious piece of Turkish taffy named Dilara.”
“I don’t know anything about Turkish taffy.”
“Delicious Dilara, that’s what people say. That sort of thing can get you in a lot of trouble.”
“You are blocking my view, which is beginning to irritate me.”
“Is that so? I don’t want to irritate you. I want to grill your kidneys and feed them to the fish. Do you actually think you are walking around this city on your own, Inspector? There is a caravan behind you, everywhere you move. Swiss, Americans, South Koreans, even Chinese.”
“And you. Don’t forget about you.”
“No, I don’t follow people anymore. I just wait for them to break circuits.”
I thought it over. “Is that what the trigger was, an electric eye? It could just as easily have been me that night.”
“Could have been, but wasn’t. I wouldn’t have left you lying there.”
“Maybe not. We’ll never know, will we? And you’re still blocking my view.”
“That disappearing trick the other night was unwise. It has some people thinking you are getting ready to jump ship. It’s what your brother said—that you are planning a defection. And the word is out that ship-jumpers should be stopped ahead of time, in any way necessary. Everyone’s nervous because of what happened in Beijing. The Center doesn’t want any more incidents.”
“I seem to remember they considered the man in Beijing a traitor and his leaving good riddance. That’s what they said on the radio, isn’t it?”
“They don’t want the garbage to blow away. They want to bury it first.”
“Bury?” I moved to stand up, but he put a hand on my arm and held me in place. He might have lost a couple of fingers, but he was still plenty strong. Starting a fight on the shores of Lake Geneva had drawbacks, so I gave him a long stare.
“You seem agitated, Inspector. Something the matter?”
“Maybe it’s just me, but I’m averse to being threatened. It bothers me somehow. Makes my blood boil, causes me to see white streaks and hear nasty voices. That sort of thing.”
“Then don’t consider anything I say as a threat.”
“Friendly advice, I suppose.”
“Here’s the problem, Inspector. You’re in someone’s way, and you refuse to get out of the way. So naturally that someone thinks the only thing to do is to move you.”
“That’s where stories of defection come in? And deep mountain lakes?”
The Man with Three Fingers didn’t answer. He stared at something behind me for a moment, then turned abruptly and walked away in the direction of town. As he passed by the last bench before the path turned away from the lake, a nondescript man in a brown coat stood up and followed him from a comfortable distance. It was so obvious it could only have been intentional. That seemed to be the Swiss style. No sense being subtle when you have so much of other people’s money in your vaults.
“You must think us painfully obvious, Inspector, but your friend is way too cocky in someone else’s city. I’ve got to do something about all these bees, don’t I?” M. Beret was standing about a meter behind me, addressing the back of my head. The Man with Three Fingers must have seen him striding across the lawn.
“Is it always necessary to come up from behind? Is there a rule against approaching someone in normal fashion?”
“Well, I suppose I might emerge next time from the lake in a frogman’s suit, but then we will startle the swans, don’t you think?”
His hand was on my shoulder. “Still sore? I can get you a nice Indonesian masseuse if you like.” He moved around the bench and sat down beside me.
The Portuguese must be fully employed. “You seem obsessed with Indonesian girls.”
“No, but I was hoping you might be.”
“These days my only obsession is for some time to think. Can’t a man ruminate in peace? I suppose I would also like a few answers, but that is probably too much to ask. Just time to speculate will do.”
“An airplane ride will give you the opportunity to sit and think, Inspector. Why don’t we drive you to the airport and put you on a plane? Anywhere you want to go, just tell me, as long as it’s away from here. Your ambassador also wants you to leave, I hear. Maybe I should let him pay for the ticket.”
“How can it be that I thought things were simple in Switzerland? I pictured cows wearing bells, and girls on hillsides waving at the wild-flowers.”
“Fantasy. It’s a very complex place, especially because people from the outside won’t leave us alone.”
“Alone? You don’t even begin to know what it’s like not to be left alone. When was the last time your country was destroyed, M. Beret?”
He sat pondering this. “Destroyed? Let me think. The Romans were here and chased the Helvetii; Napoleon stuck his nose in briefly; we’ve fought some battles with this duke and that one, but, no, I’d have to say we’ve largely avoided destruction. This city”—he swept his hand toward the buildings across the lake—“is a monument of stability. It’s been here for over two thousand years, did you know?” I didn’t know.
At that moment, with M. Beret pointing at a city whose only skyline was the oversized signs of jewelers, it became clear to me. This was the one chance I was going to get to pass on what Sohn had sent me to say. I might not have as good an opportunity to talk to anyone else who would be sure to understand. M. Beret was a man who listened carefully; he’d yet to ask me about lost socks or to comment on my ties. He would write down what I told him, and make sure it filtered out to the right places. He’d get it to liaison officers, and they would pass it around, if they knew what they were doing. It would end up in faraway in-boxes, just as Sohn planned.
“Good fortune shines on you,” I said. “Be grateful. My land is not so lucky.” As I heard myself say the words, I could barely believe my ears. This was exactly what my grandfather would say. His lectures on the sad history of Korea—overrun, bullied, forced to kneel—always filled me with rage at his self-pity. Now I was saying exactly the same thing. “We were destroyed, but don’t imagine we intend for it ever to happen again.”
“The Swiss are, as you know, Inspector, neutral. There is no reason to think of me as your enemy.”
“Neutral? That is for the rich and fortunate. We have no time for neutrality. We are weak and poor.”
M. Beret said nothing.
“That’s what you think, I know, even if you won’t say it. Don’t worry. It’s alright, we know how the world sees us. But we are not as weak as people think—or hope. What’s more, we have no room left to retreat, not a millimeter. Do people want us to starve? Then they will see how desperate we can be. We will not go quietly, let me assure you. We will not starve in the shadows and die quietly out of sight.”
“You are hardly in position to threaten anyone, I would think.”
“Don’t be too sure.” That did it. That registered with him. I could see that he was already composing the memo in his head. I added an extra line for him to use. “No one should be too sure about us in this situation.”
“There are people who say your country is on the verge of collapse.”
“There are people who don’t know their backsides from a hole in the ground.”
M. Beret took a small appointment calendar from his pocket. He had one. The delegation leader had one. The entire world but me seemed to have a little appointment book. It was some sort of mark of sophistication. If you needed an appointment calendar, it meant you had appointments, which meant you were important, called upon, connected, in charge of your life. I needed to get several, one for each pocket, at least.
“This is my appointment book, Inspector. For the past two weeks or so it has been mostly blank. Do you know why? Because I have been solely focused, obsessively focused, on watching you. No luncheon dates, no dinner invitations, nothing but you. My friends think I am having an affair. Can you believe it? My entire existence is consumed. Not counting our brief stroll in Coppet, the only break I have had was the drive to Cha-monix, and that was at night when there was nothing to see. Nothing! I couldn’t even stop for dinner.” Ah, M. Beret, I thought, you lying bastard. You had dinner with Jen? that night, whereas I had nothing to eat. “Why don’t you take a trip to Montreux tomorrow? It will do us both good. You can visit the castle, ponder the dungeon, maybe. We can have lunch in a nice restaurant, separate tables for the sake of propriety, but it will be pleasant nonetheless.”
“Castles? You struck me as someone interested solely in bulldozer parts.”
“Of course, that’s what this is all about, don’t misunderstand. I know it, and so do you.” He sighed and put away the notebook. “And so, we can be sure, does our mutual friend Jen?.”
“I may be busy and thus difficult to follow for the next several days. I’ve been making it easy for you, but I do know how to slip a tail. Why don’t you take time off? Go have dinner, clear your mind, read a book.”
“A tempting proposition, Inspector. But I must decline. Do your best. I’ll see you when I see you. Incidentally, if you like jazz, there are some good clubs around. Just ask.”
2
On arriving in Geneva, Sohn had gone directly to the mission. Then, when it was still early, he came to see me. He was waiting across the street from my hotel when I stepped outside. I made a mental note to tell M. Beret to put a bench there. I don’t like guests having to stand around. As soon as Sohn was sure I’d seen him, he started walking up the street, which according to the simple code we’d agreed on at our last meeting in Pyongyang meant he wanted me to walk in the other direction. The “other direction” in this case was down the hill toward town. If things went according to plan, he would double back and find me, assuming I could remember the prearranged pattern I was supposed to follow. Yesterday had been the third of March; that meant this was a morning for threes. Three blocks, then a right turn. Another three blocks, then a left turn. Three more blocks, then another right. It didn’t seem to me to be the best technique for a foreign city, since we could just as easily end up in the lake with the swans, but it would have to do under the circumstances. I didn’t know where all the turns would put us exactly; wherever it was, once he was there, it was up to Sohn to decide whether he wanted to go ahead with a meeting. If he saw something he didn’t like, he would call it off. At some point, M. Beret would get a report that I had been out walking, but I doubted his people would know for sure who Sohn was for a couple of days at least. The Israelis, who were keeping tabs on me even though I couldn’t figure out how, might imagine that I had sent their message and that Sohn had come running. If they wanted to meet with him, it was up to them to arrange the contact. I was through playing messenger boy.
My three-block dance led finally to a street with small shops, a playground, and a bar called Sunflower. The door was propped open with a box, so I went in and waited. The man behind the bar told me in French, then in German, and finally in English that they didn’t open until 5:00 P.M. I shrugged. He shrugged back. I sat down on one of the barstools to wait. Five minutes later Sohn popped in. The man behind the bar started to explain again that the bar was not open, but Sohn ignored him and walked to a table in the back.
“Too bad,” I said. “You just missed my brother.”
“Is that so?” Sohn turned around and pantomimed drinking something to the man behind the bar.
“The place is closed,” I said. “We’re lucky if he doesn’t kick us out.”
The man walked over with two glasses of beer and set them down, not very gently, on the table. “That will be all,” Sohn said, in French. I kept most of my composure.
“You speak French?” I asked when we were alone again.
“Of course I know French, Inspector, doesn’t everyone in the civilized world?” He held up his glass and studied it closely. “This beer is very Swiss, I’m afraid. Don’t drink it unless you have to.” He took a sip and grimaced. “Now, about your brother. You saw him off?”
“No. He told me he was leaving.”
“Well, he didn’t go anywhere. He doesn’t have tickets, and he doesn’t have reservations. I think he still has shirts at the laundry, you know, those blue shirts he likes. Surprised? He lied to you.”
“You want me to get his shirts for you?”
“No. Stay away from him and anything he has touched. He has things to do, and apparently he hasn’t done them yet. I’m pretty sure he has an appointment to meet someone. That needs to go ahead. You’ve done your job.”
“What job is that?”
“You rattled him. That can be fatal for someone like your brother. He can’t afford that sort of emotion. He has too many enemies.”
“We argued, if that’s what you mean. That’s what we usually do when we bump into each other. I don’t think it rattled him at all.”
“I think it did. I think he’s off stride. At this point, it’s a question of waiting to see how much. I’m almost sure he’s operating on his own right now. When things are still small like this, I might be able to stop them. After that, the decisions are out of reach. People take sides, they draw big pictures. They get budgets.”
“Perhaps you could be more cryptic for me.”
“Later. We’ve got work to do.”
“Me? My work here is done.”
“Before I went to your hotel, I paid a call on the ambassador. He was surprised to see me.”
“I’ll bet.”
“Actually, I thought he was going to have a stroke. No such luck. When he could finally talk, he picked up the phone and told his aide that they were leaving immediately for Zurich. A meeting, he said. I saluted him from the front steps as his car went out the gate, but I don’t think he was mollified. So I went back to his office to write him a note.”
“You went into his office?”
“I sat at his desk, actually. He shouldn’t leave some of those documents lying around like that. The wrong people might read them. Apparently, the situation is fluid.”
“Are we back to cryptic? Because if we are, I’m going to my hotel.”
“Before that, you’ll have to do some shopping. There are new instructions from the Center for everyone working overseas. They can be summarized as follows: Collect vegetable seeds and food, food, food. Fertilizer if it is to be had, but the first priority is food. So is the second priority. And so is the third. On ships, on trucks, on bicycles—it doesn’t make any difference. For the moment, we grovel, we pander, we lick the boots of anyone who will deliver. You won’t believe the catchphrase that excuses this madness.” Sohn took a pen out of his pocket. “You need a pen?”
“That’s the ambassador’s. I saw him use it. You took the ambassador’s pen.”
“Don’t worry, I left him his pencils, most of them, anyway. What you need to worry about is the new instructions.”
“What happened to ‘crazy’?” I asked. “The last time you and I spoke, that was to be my message. It was delivered, incidentally.” I didn’t mention to whom.
“Scratch ‘crazy.’ According to the new, improved thinking, it will only scare people off. ‘Quietly desperate’—that’s where things are now. If you already told people we’re crazy, you’ll have to go back and undo it.” He unscrewed the pen and looked at the parts. ‘They’ll eat us up,” he said absently. “This is exactly what the wild dogs at our door have been waiting for. It’s suicide, admitting we’re weak.”
“I’m going to ask you a question.”
“Let me ask you one first. Your brother—do you know what a menace he is, Inspector? People like him think their time has come. The Center is distracted. Every day there is more to worry about. I think we may actually be coming out of the worst of it, but there is still plenty that can go wrong. Your brother and his friends were busy last year when the sky was darkest. They used the time well, and I’m a year behind. It might as well be a lifetime.”
“Do you want me to nod knowingly, Sohn? Or will you tell me what you are talking about first?”
“Imagine this. They’ve been digging, and planning, and putting together the pieces. A piece here. A piece there.” He moved the parts of the pen around on the table. “In a month or two, if they are left alone, they’ll be ready to walk into the Center and present what they’ve done. Then it will be too late. They’ll lay out plans, sketch out scenarios. And at that point, when I am asked what I think, it’s too late. Should I say: ‘No! Don’t do everything possible to protect the Fatherland.’ Or how about: ‘No! It is dangerous to go down that path, it risks everything we’ve accomplished, it might explode in our face.’”
I frowned. Sohn was careful with his imagery; he didn’t make mistakes.
“At that point, the only answer I can offer is, ‘Good for them. Hooray for them. All honor to them.’ Your brother will be rewarded. He’ll swagger, he’ll go to the parties, he’ll put his filthy fat hands—” Sohn stopped. “Forgive me.”
“No, go ahead, say whatever you want. He isn’t my brother anymore.”
I thought Sohn would bark, but he didn’t. He hadn’t barked once the whole time.
“You have friends here who are anxious to meet,” I said.
“If you don’t mind, I’ll drink while you talk.”
“There isn’t much else to say. I assume that with your arrival, I’ve become extraneous. You’ll take over, and I can go home.”
“Nothing of the sort. There is still a lot to be done.” Sohn put his glass down and leaned toward me. Surely now, a bark. “There are things you can do that I can’t.”
“Such as?”
“Such as keeping a lid on the negotiations; such as watching over our diplomats and making sure none of them decide to stay out too late or forget to come home.” He picked up the glass again and drained it. He wasn’t going to bark, I finally realized. Overseas, he didn’t do that. Overseas, he didn’t walk like a bear, or clear his throat. Overseas, he was a different man.
“You don’t want to meet your friends?”
“I’m too busy. It’s too dangerous.” He put the pen back together, the way a soldier assembles a rifle during a drill.
“But it’s alright with you if I put my head in that lion’s mouth.”
He smiled. “Have you discovered yet what happened to the woman in Pakistan?”
“I figured you had some connection to all of that.” A thought crept up on me. “Was she yours?”
“Good guess. But mine? I don’t own people, Inspector. I don’t like to see them murdered, either. And I don’t believe for a moment that she was killed by locals. Do you?”
“Don’t tell me, her murder has something to do with why I’m here.” I stopped. “Next you’re going to tell me my brother is tied into this as well.”
He handed me the pen. “I trained her.”
“You what? She was an embassy wife. What did you train her to do? Cook? Apparently, she wasn’t very good at it.”
“How much do you already know about her, Inspector?”
“Nothing. I think I prefer it that way. When I went to look at her personnel file, it had disappeared. All I was supposed to do was to gather a few odd facts about her and sail them on their way. I should have done that. Maybe if I had, I wouldn’t be sitting here right now.”
“You were destined to be here.” Sohn smiled. His ears looked bigger, though maybe it was just the light. “If it’s odd facts you’re after, this is as odd a place as any to gather them. I thought you’d like it in Geneva.”
“Here? Why would I like it here? The trees are butchered. I’m sick to death of looking at watches in store windows. And I resent like hell being tossed in front of my brother.”
That rolled off Sohn’s back.
“Odd, my brother’s taking a sudden interest in fresh-baked bread.”
Sohn perked up. “He told you that?”
“No, I heard him talking about it on the phone.”
“I don’t suppose you know who he was talking to?”
“I have no idea.”
“Your brother hates bread.”
“I know.”
Sohn looked thoughtful, and I knew I wasn’t part of the conversation going on inside his head.
“I’d guess your friends are going to contact you fairly soon,” I said. “They seem impatient. It wouldn’t surprise me if they have reserved a room for you, probably at the usual place. Maybe I’ll see you around.” I got up and left quickly, before he could say anything more. Halfway out the door, I realized I hadn’t thanked him for the pen.
3
When I got back to the hotel, there was a bench across the street. A green felt hat sat on it, in case I had any doubt who to thank. The hotel lobby, as usual, was deserted. I walked past the desk clerk and was partway up the stairs when she called to me. “You have a message.” She held up an envelope. “You want it?”
“Of course I want it if it’s for me.”
“It might be bad news.”
I walked back down and held out my hand. “Do you mind?”
The note was from Sohn, though it wasn’t signed. All it said, in Korean, was “Same place, tonight at nine.” Today was the fourth, an even-numbered day. That meant I was supposed to subtract two hours from the time in the message. Or was it three? Which would mean we were supposed to meet at 6:00 P.M., assuming I remembered the code right. Sohn thought codes were indispensable. To me, they were confusing and easy to forget. Maybe a code with bread in it had advantages.
I arrived at the Sunflower at six, right on time. The bartender looked at his watch, then pointed to the same table Sohn and I had occupied a few hours earlier. I waited. People came into the bar, and left. The tables near me filled up with groups of three or four. I hadn’t paid much attention to the neighborhood, but it didn’t seem to be a very bourgeois crowd. A couple of women with lots of makeup and long lashes came in and surveyed the scene. One of them caught my eye. If she was Portuguese, I couldn’t tell and didn’t want to find out. I shook my head.
Three hours later, it dawned on me that Sohn wasn’t going to show up.
4
“Tell me the truth, Inspector, do you prefer New York to Geneva? You have been to New York, haven’t you?” M. Beret and I were standing in a tiny park. I didn’t like being there. It was a small piece of land sandwiched between the lake and the street, the sort of thing city architects like because it meets their quota for green space. There were lots of trees—a circle of maples around a fountain, lindens along the path, a couple of big beeches off by themselves. The beeches looked like they felt crowded and wished they were somewhere else.
“Can’t we find another spot?” The more I looked around the little park, the more I didn’t like what I saw.
“How about the airport? I can have your bags shipped later.” M. Beret sat down on a bench facing the water. I especially didn’t like that. It put our backs to the street.
“What makes you think I’ve been to New York?”
“A friend of a friend of a friend. A very long chain of friends. They met someone who talked to someone who saw you walking down a hill to Third Avenue. You looked lost, they said.”
“Small world. I had no idea you had orthodox friends.”
“Given your thought patterns, I’ll take that for a yes. But how am I to interpret such information? A mere police inspector, going here and there, there and here, all in the space of two or three months? It’s very odd, is it not?”
“I thought so.” I hadn’t been walking down the hill, I’d been walking up. The other man had been walking down, the friendly man who had stopped. A friendly old man with distant connections to M. Beret?
“Again I ask, what am I to make of your frequent travels? More to the point, why is your passport so light on visas if you travel so much? Do you just slip across borders like the March wind?”
“My passport? Can we walk a bit? It’s getting cold on this bench.” The wind was whipping the lake into frantic wavelets that smacked against each other. In the sunlight they might have sparkled, but not under the leaden gray of the early morning clouds. When I passed by Ahmet’s place on the way to meet M. Beret, it had been closed; no sign in the window, but the shades were down and the door was locked. Maybe Ahmet was out getting his knife sharpened. That meant Dilara was alone, in her bedroom upstairs. Or was she not alone? It was an interesting question, but not as interesting as the one occupying my mind at the moment. When could I get something to eat? I waited for M. Beret to produce a roll from his pocket. This was how dogs were trained, and I could see why it was so effective.
“Obviously, you’ve checked,” I said. “Funny, I examine other people’s passports with some care, but I never look at my own very closely, and it’s not something I keep at home in a drawer. Surely you know that much about my country. I am handed a passport, it has my name and picture in it, a birth date. That’s good enough for me. Is it the same one as last time? Who cares? Maybe they lost the last one after I handed it in. Maybe they revised the covers and had to reissue new documents to everyone. How should I know? Believe it or not, I have other things to worry about. If you want the truth, I didn’t really want to come here, to this polished place under these friendless mountains. It was an order.”
It took only a few minutes to walk around the edge of the park. His roll-hand stayed in his pocket the whole time. When we got back to where we started, M. Beret rested his arms on the railing that ran alongside the path. “What do you think, Inspector?” He pointed across the river.
“I’ve been wondering. Are those political slogans on the tops of those buildings?”
“Political slogans? No, we don’t do that. They’re advertisements. That one on the end is for watches.”
“Then they’re slogans for the rich. Ours exhort the people. Yours exhort the rich. We say, ‘Victory!’ You say, ‘Buy!’ Not a world of difference, is there?”
“Which one do you prefer?”
I was disappointed, somehow. He hadn’t struck me as the type to ask that sort of question. We’d finally established good working relations, I thought. I didn’t expect him to spoil things by dragging in politics. “Have you seen the trees on the street that runs alongside the lake? The street with the woman with the rump.”
“Quai Gustave-Ador?”
“Is that her name?”
“The street.”
“Well, those are plane trees along that street. When plane trees are free to grow, they grow tall, and the shade they produce is sweet all summer long. Those trees of yours, an entire line of them, have been butchered.”
“You mean cut down?”
“They might wish they were dead. No, they have been mangled. Their tops have been hacked off. They are maimed.”
“Pity the trees.”
It was too snide to pass over. I went over to the bench and sat down. I wanted to be sitting when I put this knife between his ribs. “I happened to be out walking the other night. No doubt you noticed.”
“I’m behind on my reports, but I’ll take your word for it. Good, exercise is what you need. It helps with any lingering jet lag. Clarifies the senses.” He sat down beside me. “I might wish for better weather, though. It’s a bit windy. You must forgive me.” There it was again—snide. That wasn’t his normal style. Maybe he’d caught his fingers in a door.
“Yes, it is a bit windy, and a little chilly in the evenings. That’s what I wanted to ask you about. I noticed that you seem to have an organization very similar to the Young Pioneers in my country. It seems to function after sundown.”
“Is that so?” M. Beret looked at me warily. “What do you mean?”
“I happened upon several young girls. They all had on the same uniform, more or less. White boots. Long white boots.”
I see.
“Coats with fur collars.”
“Yes.”
“I would have thought the skirts were too short for this weather. Maybe there is a shortage of cloth in Switzerland? Or problems with distribution?”
“And did you approach one of them?”
I ignored him. “The blue light. That’s what got me curious. Does it signify the headquarters of this organization for young girls?”
“You would like to investigate?”
“Some of them seemed very young.”
“They do.”
“I also saw a man, very short, walking behind an African woman of proportions I never even imagined.”
“Indeed.”
“Isn’t it dangerous, that sort of thing? Do you have ambulances standing by?”
He laughed. “He visits her once a month, sometimes more.”
“I saw a Korean girl, too.”
“Korean? No, she is Thai.”
“Thai? M. Beret, give me the benefit of the doubt, please. She may sit in a Thai café wearing those long white boots, but that does not make her Thai.”
He pondered this. I could see him mentally rearranging his tidy filing system. “We shall see,” he said. “Thank you. It’s always good to have an informed point of view.” He adjusted the belt on his coat. It was a gesture of unease, grooming behavior that police of all backgrounds lapse into when they are unsure of their footing. “We don’t claim perfection. Or won’t that do for an excuse?”
He might have been apologizing for mislabeling the girl. It was something I was not prepared to leave ambiguous. “I am simply observing your wide world, M. Beret. I hope you didn’t think I was casting the first stone.”
He smiled grimly, the way a man who has gotten the point might do. “You never really answered my original question. Out of curiosity, if you don’t mind, what were you doing in New York?”
“I can’t believe you of all people are asking me that.” He still hadn’t produced the roll, and I was beginning to think I would have to buy one for myself once I got out of this cramped park. “Is it a requirement in the West that a person must account for his movements to every police department and intelligence agency in every country he visits?”
“This isn’t an interrogation, Inspector.” He stood up. “I’m simply curious, and I thought you would find it a novel experience to answer a harmless question.” I pretended not to notice that he had put his hand in his pocket. Dogs do that sometimes, look away when they’re interested. “Your friend, the one who arrived yesterday, is in the morgue. He has a broken neck. Someone has to identify him, and your mission refuses to do it. I thought you might do the honors, seeing as how you were in a bar with him yesterday.” He held out half a roll. “Please, be my guest.”
That explained why Sohn didn’t make the appointment at the Sunflower. The question was, when did he send me that note? Or did he send it at all? “When did you find the body?”
“I can’t very well cooperate with you, Inspector, if you don’t cooperate with me.”
“I don’t need your cooperation.”
“Yes, you do. If you don’t want to end up like him.”
“You going to break my neck?”
M. Beret looked offended. “No, but there is someone in the neighborhood who doesn’t like you, that’s the impression we’re getting.” He paused. “Don’t ask me how I know.” He paused again. “I don’t want anything to happen to you, not here. Having one of you in the freezer is enough.”
“He had plenty of enemies.”
“Then we’ll have to make a list, won’t we? I’ll find a thick pad of paper.” He dropped both halves of the roll in my lap. “Two o’clock, I’ll be at the bar, the one where you met him. If you hurry, you can make the start of the morning negotiating session. It’s at your mission this time, is it not? Don’t worry, you won’t have an afternoon session today.”