Bamboo And Blood Part 24

"You might say I'm a traveler. Would your companion like to stretch out on this seat? I can move."

The man ignored the offer. "From where do you come?"

Briefly, I considered the possibilities. "I'm Mexican," I said. "And you?

"Sri Lanka." He murmured something to the woman, who picked up her head and nodded to me. "My wife is from Pakistan. She has become quite homesick and a little feverish in this place." He waved his hand at the pa.s.sing landscape. "It's very neat, wouldn't you say?" The woman put her head on his shoulder again and closed her eyes. He closed his eyes as well for a moment, and then opened them suddenly. "Do you travel much?"

"Some." I realized I had seen him before. What was he doing on this train? How did he know me?

"Some." He repeated the word slowly. "Have you ever been to Pakistan?"

"Me?" From anyone else, someone who hadn't been in the second-row photo M. Beret had put on the table in the Sunflower cafe, someone who hadn't been standing next to my brother, this all might have pa.s.sed for polite conversation between strangers on a train. If he had been a Martian, he might have been asking innocently, "Have you ever been to Pluto?" But this wasn't polite conversation. His presence was poison. I stood up. "Please excuse me; I can't ride backward for very long. I've got to find another seat."

The man gave me an odd smile and looked out the window. "Should we ever visit Mexico," he said, "no doubt we'll run across each other." I don't know what sarcasm sounds like in Sri Lanka, but that must have been it.

5.

Two cars ahead, I found a seat facing forward and sat down. I had the coach to myself. I didn't bother to sit on the left side because I had a feeling there wasn't any use looking for a flag on a blue truck. The man from Sri Lanka didn't follow me. From the odd smile he gave me, though, I didn't think this was in the script for Jeno?s operation. Maybe they should have gone through it twenty-one times. Jeno surely would have told me to expect the dark man. Who was he? He might be working for M. Beret, at least he was in one of M. Beret's photographs. But M. Beret's file vaults probably contained miles of photographs. I was running through the list of possibilities from habit-even though I already knew the answer. The man knew my brother. Lots of people knew my brother, to their regret I imagined, but not that many would be photographed with him. It was always possible the man worked with Sohn, more likely against him. What if the man had murdered Sohn? Once you start making up lists of possibilities, they can go on reproducing and mutating for a while all by themselves. It's like having the flu. You get better eventually, or you don't. The last thing on the list isn't necessarily right, but it tends to stick with you.

At Flamatt, I glanced over and saw a blue truck flying a red flag, which surprised me. So they weren't going to call it off after all. The conductress came through the door in the front of the car and walked to my seat. She was blond, a long braid down her back. She wore pants, and she moved provocatively in them. I gave her my ticket and a friendly smile.

She smiled back. "Nice day to travel," she said. Small lips. It was Margrit. I remembered to avoid any sudden moves. She handed back the ticket. It was stamped with tomorrow's date. She'd scrubbed the operation. It could have been for any reason, but there was really only one that made sense. The dark man with the wistful Pakistani wife, the two of them close enough to kill me almost without moving a muscle.

"Know a good place for dinner?" I wasn't hungry, but I asked Margrit because it was something to say.

"Only if you like cheese," she said and walked away.

I watched her reflection in the window as she moved into the next car. Good wig, I thought to myself. Nice trousers, too.

6.

The next afternoon, a Sunday, the delegation leader went out for a walk in the park near the mission. He was alone and moving quickly, not like someone who was trying to think, more like someone who knew where he was going and thought he might be late.

I was waiting for him. He had been nervous all morning, inattentive during most of the delegation meeting and then snapping at his deputy for lapses so minor they didn't bear mentioning. Just before the session broke up, he went around the table and dissected each person's performance. They were all going to face intense criticism when they returned home, he said. New instructions had arrived that the talks were to make progress. On what basis they were supposed to proceed had not been specified. All he had been told was that the delegation was supposed to create the proper atmosphere. He turned to Mr. Roh, who handed him a piece of paper. "Proper atmosphere," he read the term aloud. "Is there one of you with a good idea?" No one looked at anyone else when they left the room.

It was clear to me that the delegation leader wasn't planning to sit around and do nothing the rest of the day. He was anxious about something, and it wasn't about creating "atmosphere." That wouldn't bother him. He could do that, fix the atmosphere, by just readjusting his smile, or looking like he was taking notes instead of taking off his gla.s.ses and pretending to ignore what the other side was saying. There was something more serious on his mind. For a moment-a very brief, uncomfortable moment-I worried that he was planning to defect. What if he'd received a warning that when he got home he would face serious problems, something beyond the routine, and so, rather than go back to the old home, he was going to jump to a new one? That's what triggered most defections-people concerned that they'd been caught doing something they shouldn't. That's why we were constantly being warned by the Ministry to take it easy in investigations of people who were overseas. "Don't squeeze what you don't have to," the Minister famously said at one meeting.

When he came out the door and down the steps, the delegation leader didn't look around or stop to take a breath. He just pointed himself in the direction he had already decided to go, and he went. Once he was out of the compound, he picked up the pace. He might have been running, he was moving so fast, but he still managed to give the appearance of someone just out for a brisk walk.

I gave him a pretty good lead, not entirely by choice. I could barely keep up with the pace he had set. If he spotted me, it would be hard to pretend I was out for a leisurely stroll and happened to b.u.mp into him. I was panting with exhaustion; in another couple of minutes, I'd break into a sweat. My better judgment told me to break off. For once, I almost paid attention. The path turned a corner onto an unpaved track. I stopped. There was no one around, but the sound of tires on gravel was still in the air. Something large and white flashed through the trees, speeding down the road that led back out to the main avenue along the lake. I took a few deep breaths. Whatever it was, the engine was nicely tuned, though the m.u.f.fler needed work.

"Going somewhere?" The Man with Three Fingers appeared from nowhere in front of me. "You seem to be out of breath."

"You do have a habit of turning up, don't you?"

"Me? If you hadn't been in such a hurry, you'd have noticed me."

"I'm busy." I turned to go, then turned back. "Were you following me, or him? People don't normally follow from in front. Or is there a new technique?"

He grinned; the effect was deadly. If a hunting spider could grin, this would be it. "I was just out for a stroll in the park and remembered you liked wood, so I thought I'd become better acquainted with some trees. But somehow, they all look the same." He walked over to a large chestnut tree. "This here, for example. I'd say in a couple of months, it will be flowering. It's an ornamental, wouldn't you say?"

"It's dead."

"Really?" He whistled and stepped back. "Dead. How do you like that? I wonder what killed it. Care to venture a guess, Inspector?"

"Why were you following him?"

"I could ask you the same thing."

"Or maybe you weren't following him. Maybe you were trying to intercept him."

"And why would I want to do that?"

"I don't know. Maybe because you were afraid he was going away and wasn't coming back."

"No, that's why you you were following him, Inspector." He turned to look at the tree again. "What a shame. This thing happens a lot, I guess. Death, I mean." were following him, Inspector." He turned to look at the tree again. "What a shame. This thing happens a lot, I guess. Death, I mean."

7.

I thought Jeno would be put off by the cancellation of his operation, but he seemed cheery enough, sitting on the bench across from my hotel, reading a newspaper.

"You owe me a croissant," he said, "but don't worry. We can settle later. Sit down and enjoy the spring air. Look at this light, will you? Soft as a Bedouin's handshake."

I didn't care about Bedouins. "What happened?"

"Nothing happened. We called it off, that's all."

"There was someone on the train you didn't like."

Jeno?s eyebrows did a brief tango. "You picked up on that, did you?"

"Hard not to. You think he was there by accident?"

"He's never anywhere by accident. That wasn't his wife, by the way."

"How did he know I'd be on the train? You have a problem in your organization?"

"No. He just showed up. Lucky break for us. We've been wondering where he was."

"How did he know I'd be there?"

"He probably didn't. He might have seen you at the station when you got on the train. There aren't many Koreans around, and he must have been curious, sort of like a cat. He is careful where he steps, and if he sees anything new or out of place, he goes the other way."

"He didn't go the other way. He came right to me and sat down. How could he know I was Korean?"

"Well, it's a cinch you're not Mexican."

If Jeno was so happy to see the man, I figured it meant he must be a target, and that meant he had something to do with the weapons trade, missiles maybe. A perfect tab, a perfect slot. Geneva was a busy city. No wonder M. Beret looked so tired. "I hope we're not going to try this again. Once is enough."

"Don't worry, the person who was here to see you had to leave right away. You sure you won't accept a trip to the land of milk and honey? We can do the whole thing in twenty-four hours."

"Yes, I'm sure you can. But I don't like to rush my time on the beach, it's bad for my tan."

Jeno folded his paper and tucked it under his arm. "I'll be in touch."

"The man on the train, who was he going to meet?"

"Guess."

I didn't have to. What if my brother had even been sitting a few cars ahead, in the first cla.s.s section? Same train, different dreams.

Chapter Four.

"This is crazy, I said when I could slip out of her arms and talk again. "Your father will kill us."

"No, he loves me. Anyway, he's busy downstairs."

"Downstairs! You told me he would be away for a couple of days."

"He was going to be, but he got a rush request, so he came back. He's been working all night in the kitchen."

"Any minute he could come up and kill one of us. And something tells me it won't be you."

"Perhaps. But look at me. Look closely." She made sure that even in the moonlit room a lot was visible. "When you look at me, do you think of my father?" In case I had missed anything, she turned slightly.

"No." I took a deep breath. "I can't say that I do."

"Then come here. No more discussion." She took my hand and pulled me back to her.

2.

Barely past dawn, when I was almost dressed, she opened her eyes. "You see, my little policeman, you are still alive. Take the side streets and no one will ever know you were here. Your survival instincts are probably still functioning."

I was in no shape to ask what she meant. I was more concerned with getting down the back stairs without seeing her father. Even if I made it through that minefield, there was the problem of what the day clerk in my hotel would say when I walked in, slightly rumpled. If anyone asked, the hotel staff would gladly relay the news that I had been out all night.

"Was it wonderful?" Dilara snuggled under the blanket, not really interested in the answer.

3.

M. Beret was sitting in the lobby of my hotel, a cup of coffee on the table next to his chair. I was less surprised to see him than I was to see the coffee. I hadn't realized the hotel was so generous. Maybe they would part with an extra bar of soap, after all.

"Inspector, good morning."

"Wouldn't they give you a room?"

"A room? I don't sleep much these days. Too much thrashing about in the adjoining suites."

"That never bothers me," I said and started up the stairs. I wondered if M. Beret's people only got audio, or if there were pictures, too. And if so, would they get back to Pak? I knew what would happen. He would call me into his office and look at me somberly for a moment before studying a piece of paper on his desk. Then in the most exquisitely vague language he would explain that he had received "certain information," that this was potentially serious if it should develop any further but it was not his job to babysit my life in all of its facets, that he expected me to act responsibly in all ways, and that was the end of it as far as he was concerned. Then he would put the piece of paper into a folder, close the folder and put it in his desk drawer, and look up at me. "Is that clear enough?" he would ask, say he had a meeting to attend, and walk out the door.

M. Beret drank a little coffee. He replaced the cup with more than normal deliberation. "I thought you'd like to know, we threw Ahmed a very large catering job last night, with instructions that it had to be delivered by 6:00 a.m." He glanced at his watch, which was not a cheap one. "Would you like some Turkish coffee to perk you up?"

"He must be exhausted."

"I'm sure he's not the only one."

4.