has that as a basic rule.”
“Perhaps, but I heard somewhere to beware of Greeks bearing gifts. We don’t see many Greeks,” I said, “so I assumed that went for the Swiss as well.”
He smiled, not the charming one.
“Maybe even Pakistanis.” It didn’t mean anything, or maybe it did. Pakistan was on my mind. Not on my mind, exactly, but just below the surface. Ever since my old friend the acting personnel chief had let me know that someone from Pakistan had gone to Hwadae county, I’d heard a rustling in my subconscious, something stirring, a Siberian wind blowing dead leaves along the frozen ground. Hwadae county was off-limits; we were supposed to report anyone overheard saying anything about the place. It was supposed to be a big secret that things to do with missiles went on up there, but plenty of people had relatives, who had friends, who knew former army buddies who drank too much and said something they weren’t supposed to when their heads were lolling and their tongues were loose. If someone from Pakistan had gone to Hwadae, then it wasn’t so far-fetched that the special section might have an unusual interest in what happened to a certain Korean woman who died in Pakistan—and something kept telling me that my first wild hunch had been completely right, it had been Pakistan. In the great wide world somewhere else, that might be a stretch. Not here, not in my little corner of reality.
Jenö didn’t say anything when I mentioned Pakistanis, but the half-smile normally on his lips vanished into the cold. In that instant, he told me just what I needed to know. I left before his eyebrows slow-danced back into place.
9
After I left Jenö, I sat in the duty vehicle for a few minutes with the engine running and the heater on. Now I was pretty sure she worked at the embassy in Pakistan, or at least found access to a phone there. It was still officially a hunch, but it had become one of those hunches that don’t want to get crowded out by other possibilities. Yes, if Pak wanted to argue I’d have to admit it might have been somewhere else; I couldn’t prove she’d been in Islamabad. Actually, I wasn’t even supposed to prove it; I wasn’t supposed to worry about it. It wasn’t the sort of fact the broom was supposed to sweep. If the Man with Three Fingers hadn’t turned up and sneered, I might have dropped the whole thing, but I didn’t want to leave another body lying around my conscience.
The problem was, where to go next? Her husband had an assignment, but doing what? For whom? Her father said she’d complained he was going to get her into trouble. If she was just a wife, how could he get her into trouble with the locals? It wasn’t beyond possibility that she had an assignment, too. And if she’d had an assignment, maybe it was connected with why she turned up dead. In that case, there was only one place to begin checking—the Foreign Ministry. It wasn’t somewhere I liked to go, but they usually had hot water for tea.
Outside it was frigid but clear, so I decided to leave the car at the hotel and walk. The less I had to drive on slick streets, the better I liked it. There were a few other people out walking, and even a couple of old trucks on the road. I watched them go by, which may be why I didn’t notice that the sidewalk down the hill hadn’t been cleared. Just as my feet left the ground, an army jeep coming up the hill spun its wheels and slid sideways into a nearby snowdrift. The driver climbed out and looked around. He spotted me on the ground.
“You! Give me a hand.” It was an officer, a colonel. Just like I remembered from the army, a colonel always shows up when you least need him. When I didn’t move, he bristled. “I said give me a hand. I haven’t got all day.”
Inquiring why he didn’t have a driver didn’t seem like a good idea, certainly not while I was on my back. I stood up slowly, careful not to slip again. “I’m on duty, Colonel, and on assignment.” It was an assignment I’d given myself, but what the hell. “I’ll give you a push, and maybe you can drive me where I need to go. It isn’t far.”
That bargain didn’t seem to