the Foreign Ministry, apparently. Chatting away, making snide comments, convinced no one could possibly understand Hebrew. Can you believe it? What are they coming for, do you think?”

“How should I know? And if I were you, that would be the least of my concerns. You’re in enough trouble. The real question is not why they are on the airplane.” Actually, that was a real question, it just didn’t bear on my immediate problem. “The real question is, why are you coming back? And why the hell didn’t you let on before that you knew Korean? It would have saved me having to translate through frozen lips when we were in that hut in the mountains.” I shut my eyes again. There were two questions that loomed, and I had no doubt that if I ever found the answers, they would be intertwined. First, exactly what I asked him—why was he coming back? And second, which was my problem more than his—who approved the visa after the trouble we had keeping him safe from the special section last time? A normal person wouldn’t want to come back. A normal visa request after what had happened would have been turned down instantly. It would have provoked gales of laughter before being stamped: DENIED. This return trip wasn’t normal in any respect. It even went beyond abnormal. So where did that leave me, other than accompanying a foreigner on the wrong side of unfathomable?

Jenö unleashed the familiar smile. “No games, Inspector. I appreciate your coming to get me, but it was unnecessary. I don’t need an escort; no one is going to touch a hair on my head.” The pitch of the engines changed abruptly again, too abruptly for him, because he paled and gripped the armrest. Apparently, he hadn’t been at Entebbe.

“Don’t let it worry you,” I said. What happened to his hair would get sorted out after we landed. “Probably just some dirt in the fuel line. It usually clears.” I watched him pale a little more before poking his shoulder. “Look, would I be here if I thought there was any danger? Don’t worry. This plane is indestructible. If it hasn’t crashed by now, it never will—that’s what you have to keep telling yourself. Don’t pay so much attention to sounds. You have to train yourself not to hear things sometimes. Like the thudding of Cossack hoofs.”

“Very stoic.” His voice was a little strained; maybe he was low on those silk pills he took every morning, or whatever it was that kept his voice so damned smooth. He craned his neck to look out the window.

“Do you want to switch seats?” I said. “You’ll feel better if you don’t have to look at the earth. It confuses the horizon, makes you dizzy when we bank or go bump.”

“Not at all. I just hate landings. Do you mind if I shut my eyes and sweat for the next twenty minutes until we’re on the ground?”

“Suit yourself.” The landing gear made a loud thump, and the pilot pushed the plane into attack mode. I checked to make sure the wings were attached, and spent the rest of the way down wondering how big a crowd from the special section was already assembled on the tarmac.

5

The next morning, Pak sat at his desk and pulled his ear. “This is complicated. No, I’m wrong, it’s not complicated. That’s too simple. It’s unbelievable, completely unbelievable.” He shook his head. “I still don’t believe it. Tell me you are joking, Inspector.”

“I stick to facts, and the facts are these. The first group, in the front of the plane, didn’t know the second group was in the back, and vice versa. They come from separate parts of the Israeli government. They don’t communicate, very secretive; one hand doesn’t know what the other is doing, if you can believe that sort of thing happens.”

“So what are we supposed to do? Keep them apart? Bring them together? Put out name cards in the hotel dining room so they don’t get mixed up and share a table with each other?” Pak motioned for me to sit down, but I didn’t want to. If I sat, we’d start talking about things we shouldn’t be discussing. Inevitably, the subject of how bad things were in the countryside would come up, people moving without permits to find food, bodies on the side of the road, trains with old women riding on the roofs of the railway cars and falling off. We’d talk, one