because the boss said if we got good enough, one day they’d send us to steal the Golden Gate Bridge.”

Again, I sensed problems with the anchor. Pak had never told me anything like that before, not even hinted it. Something was making him very bold, almost reckless. “Do you want to talk about San Francisco or New York?”

Pak smiled and studied his cigarette. “Go on, tell me a tale. What about the buildings?”

“Buildings,” I said, relieved he seemed to have calmed down again. “You’ve seen enough pictures to know what the skyline looks like. But you can’t really understand the traffic without being there. There’s noise from cars, horns honking, bus engines straining, almost the whole day long. At night there are trucks. I don’t know what they carry, but they are going fast and they make a hell of a racket. Most of the cars are old—plenty of speeding and not much attention to traffic laws. Hardly any traffic police, but otherwise lots of patrols in cars and some on foot. If we had that many police visible on the streets, there would be a revolution. There’s always an emergency vehicle screaming up one street and down another.”

“Pedestrians? Bicycles?”

“Hardly any bicycles. Must be banned, though you’d have to be crazy to ride a bike in that traffic. You can’t walk down the sidewalk without running into some beggars; in fact, a lot of beggars. Some prostitutes, too. A considerable number of people who looked very rich, if you find yourself in the right neighborhood. Women …” I paused to collect my thoughts because I still found it hard to describe. When I had seen it I could barely believe my eyes. “Women dressed up but obviously not satisfied with what they have because they are shopping for more. Prices are crazy; the prices of some of that clothing must be worth several months’ wages to the clerks. Countless restaurants and markets, plenty of vegetables. Even in winter.”

“Vegetables.” Pak nodded. “You journey to a distant civilization, and you tell me about carrots?”

“Wait, I nearly forgot. Where’s our foreigner? I should get in touch with him; we have unfinished business, remember?”

“Don’t bother. He left.”

“Left? When?”

“The day after I told him you were called away on another assignment.”

“Did he ask where?”

“He did.”

“Did you tell him?”

“No.”

“Strange that he should leave all of a sudden.” It didn’t sit right, somehow.

“Everything about him is strange. Strange is our byword these days. Get back to the buildings. You skipped over that part.”

“Old, new, tall, short, no empty spaces, just wall-to-wall buildings except for a few parks and the banks of the rivers. They’ve never been in a war, so nobody flattened the place. They do it themselves, the tearing down.”

“It doesn’t sound like you were in the office much, interviewing people.”

“The mission wasn’t interested in cooperating. Once I started asking about our subject, no one wanted to talk to me except to register complaints about her lack of cooking skills. So I went out, tried to get some feel on my own for where she’d been, whom she might have met, what she might have seen. Routine stuff.”

“And?”

“I got lost.”

“Were you followed?”

“Didn’t I already go over this?”

“Yes, but we’re going to get asked again and again, so let me make sure I know your story.”

“It’s hard to be sure whether I was followed. That’s my story.”

“Not the best, but we’ll work on it. You said you were followed into a bookshop.”

“Who knows? I told you, the same guy went into four coffee shops with me. I suppose it’s possible that he just liked coffee. I only went in to warm up.”

“You want me to guess? I’m guessing you were followed. Besides him, anyone approach you directly?”

I thought about it. “I was walking up a street, very steep, right where cars come out of a tunnel that goes under the river, east something street. There was a man walking down the hill. He stopped and asked if I needed help.”

“Strange. Did he stop everybody he saw, or just you?”

“I was looking up at the buildings. He might have thought I was lost, which I was. He said a few words of Korean that he seemed to know, but I pretended I was Chinese.”

“You think it was choreographed?”

“Nah, just chance. Old guy, colorful coat, though—red and black and white and I don’t know what else. He didn’t seem to have much to do. He wasn’t in a hurry to get anywhere like everybody else.”

“You double-check?”

“Sure. I made a