handle. Don’t drag me into it.” A horn sounded as a car pulled into our building’s driveway. I looked out the window. The car was black, and it had party plates. “It’s Sohn.”

“I need to be in my office,” Pak said, bouncing out of the chair and hurrying down the hall. A moment later he was back, with a tired smile around his eyes. “I just realized, he’ll be outside the gate for a while. The new guards are going to give him a hard time. He’ll show them his party ID and they’ll stare at it. There, see?” Pak pointed out my window. “One of them dropped it in the snow, and the other stepped on it.”

“Mind if I watch, too?”

“No. I don’t want him to look up and see you.” Pak stepped away from the window. “Actually, he shouldn’t see me, either. He’ll get out of the car”—a door slammed—“and start threatening them. Then he’ll demand to use the gate phone.”

The phone on Pak’s desk rang. Pak pressed a button and routed it into my office. He put the receiver carefully to his ear. “Yes, comrade. I’m happy to give them orders to let you in, but I don’t control them, as you know.” He listened, but not with any tension in his posture. “No, not at all; I’m not denying you entry. It’s just that I don’t control entry. They do. No, it wasn’t my idea to have it done that way. Who can I call to fix it? I can call the Ministry, but then they’ll have to call the army. That’s the new … yes, of course, I’ll be right down.” He hung up the phone. “The guards will back off when they see me, at least I hope so. Otherwise my feet will get cold in all that slush.”

2

It had started snowing again and was almost dark when I heard what sounded like a bear coming up the stairs. The door to Pak’s office slammed. There followed fifteen minutes of angry words and sharp barks. I leaned into the hall to hear better. Suddenly, Pak’s door flew open.

“There you are, Inspector.” He motioned to me, a slight warning. “Come in and sit down.” Pak walked back to his desk with that uneasy gait that meant he was going to tell me something I didn’t want to hear. “Close the door while you’re at it.”

I half expected the bear would be sitting across from Pak, but when I stepped into the office, the visitor’s chair was empty. Instead, in the far corner, a man lounged against the wall. If Pak wanted the door shut, it meant we were not going to have a conversation about the weather.

“Inspector.” Pak cleared his throat. “This is Comrade Sohn. He is from—”

“Never mind where I am from.” The man barked to clear his own throat and then coughed to make sure the job was done. His ears were exceedingly small and perfectly shaped. It was as if the old ones had been surgically removed, replaced by a new pair from a child, and pasted to the side of his head, but slightly too low. On a woman, they might have looked good. Like shells. On him, it made you wonder if he was underdeveloped from the neck up. I tried not to stare. No wonder Pak had been so upset at the mention of ears.

“We can skip where he is from.” Pak indicated I was to sit in the vacant chair. “But I believe he has something to tell you.”

As far as I was concerned, Sohn had stepped off on the wrong foot. “I’m all ears,” I said. I cleared my throat, not to be left out.

The man looked closely at me, weighing whether I was going to be trouble. Then he grunted and glanced around the office. It wasn’t exactly disdain on his face, but he managed to convey that he was not usually to be found in this type of unimportant setting. Maybe that’s why he was standing, to make clear he didn’t feel completely comfortable in such a place. “Normally, our conversation wouldn’t be held in offices like this,” he said at last and coughed. “Normally, your supervisor would have nothing to do with it. Normally”—he paused to emphasize how abnormal everything was—“I would just borrow you for a while. You’d be put on leave from your duties, and then when everything was done, you’d drop back into this place. If all went well, you wouldn’t