been kidnapped. Quite exciting. And you? Been skiing on the Italian side?”
“I don’t ski.”
“Then you must have bruised your shoulder jumping from a car. It takes practice.”
“How would you know if I bruised my shoulder?”
“You’re limping like a bird with a sprained wing.”
“I’m tired, if you don’t mind. I’d like to get some sleep. Will you do me a favor and tell my mission that I was knocked unconscious in a disco and nearly suffocated in the crush of young, sex-starved bodies, but that I’m alright now?”
“Of course, Inspector, that is probably as believable as anything.” He closed his book and watched me climb the stairs. “How was the lamb, by the way?”
“Good night, monsieur.”
I heard him move softly to the door.
Chapter Five
“The talks are locked up. We have no instructions; none will show up until we have sent back a good explanation for where you have been.” The security man at the mission was pasty-faced and nervous. He had already smoked two cigarettes and was fumbling to light a third. The ambassador sat quietly to the side. His aide was taking copious notes, though since nobody was saying much, it was hard to see what there was to record so far. Long silences can speak volumes, but it can be tricky getting them down on paper. When I first joined Pak’s section, I would polish my interrogation reports for hours, noting everything. Remarks, silences, facial tics—everything. Eventually, Pak told me that the Ministry had requested we submit something shorter. No more than one page for each report. “Boil it down,” they told him. I told Pak we’d lose the nuance. He laughed. “Keep a special folder for nuance, O. Once a year we’ll dump it out on your desk and sort through the pile.”
“We’re waiting, Inspector. You were gone for twenty-four hours. Thursday night to Friday night. Where were you?” I recognized the man talking as the driver who met me at the airport when I arrived. In this room, he didn’t look like a driver anymore, or sound like one. The security man observed him sourly.
Interesting, I thought. “Turkish food,” I said. “Since I was told not to attend Thursday night’s dinner with the delegation, I went out for Turkish food. I think I drank too much of that ugly liquor of theirs; when I came to, I was in a pile of boxes on a street near a nightclub. It was quite bizarre, actually. Hard to believe, but there you are. Keep away from that liquor, that’s my advice. If you don’t mind my asking, what do my drunken wanderings have to do with holding the negotiations? It’s not as if I add a lot to the discussions. I heard you accused them of kidnapping me. Why would they want to do that?”
The door opened, and a woman handed a sealed envelope to the ambassador. She waited while he signed a log. “I think this might save us some time,” he said. “Give me a moment to read it.” He carefully opened the envelope and looked at the single sheet of paper inside. “That’s clear enough,” he said when he had read it through twice. He looked at the man standing next to me. “No more questions.”
“What?” The security man ground out his cigarette. “Says who?”
The ambassador’s aide grimaced but didn’t stop writing. The ambassador folded the paper and put it back in the envelope. “Inspector, I am going to request that you be sent home immediately. That’s a formality. I don’t really require approval. I have good and sufficient reason to order you out on my own authority, even before I receive guidance from Pyongyang. Your brother and I had a conversation the other day, and now I see why he warned me against letting you stay. You are disrupting my operations here. Because I do not know what you are doing or why, I consider you a menace. The Swiss are also unhappy, and if they are unhappy, so am I. The last thing we can afford is to have the Swiss snapping at us. They don’t want a defection here; neither do I. It doesn’t matter what airplane leaves in the next three hours, or where it goes. I want you on it.”
Defection? Had my brother spread the word that I was thinking of defecting? There was a knock on the door, and the same woman came in with another envelope. The ambassador signed the log again, and this time ripped the envelope open.