Inspector O 04 - The Man with the Baltic Stare by James Church Read Free Book Online

streets were turning color, and in an hour or so smoke from roasting chestnuts and sweet potatoes would be drifting from the kiosks. Already the air was painted with faraway hope. It was an autumn sky remembered from years past, always sparkling in anticipation—in anticipation of what I never understood. My grandfather said autumn was a party, that most trees acted foolishly drunk in the fall and then wept at their loss all winter long. He didn’t like evergreens, but he said at least they were sober.
    I walked about a kilometer, taking in the sunshine and becoming more and more uneasy. The problem was that no matter which way I turned, Li’s warnings from the other night trailed beside me. No, I didn’t know what I didn’t know, but I was beginning to get a few ideas. Major Kim had extraordinary authority, he was from the South, and Pyongyang had the indefinable feel of a tiny planet beginning to wobble on its axis. There were more babies, more children being pushed in strollers, more couples walking together. The traffic ladies weren’t where they ought to be. There were fewer of them, and they were doing their ballet in the smaller intersections. They looked the same as ever—same blue uniforms, same pouty lips—but none of them blew their whistles when I crossed in the middle of the street instead of taking the underpass. Even the cranes at the construction sites had changed, the old, stubby dinosaurs replaced by long, graceful booms. It wasn’t only how things looked. It was howthey felt, how they fit together. A city can change in five years, I thought, but not like this. It wasn’t until I went up a long flight of stairs and crossed high over a train yard that the growing panic in my chest subsided. I stopped and looked down. Here, at least, the grime was familiar.
    From the train yard, I knew, it wasn’t far to the subway entrance. A tall man leaned against the railing, watching the traffic.
    “Don’t tell me,” I said. “You’re waiting for a bus.”
    Li kept his eyes on the traffic. “My car is on the next street. Let’s go for a ride.”
    “Let’s not. I’m getting out of here, compliments of Major Kim.”
    “I’ll take a wild guess. He said he’d send a car for you tomorrow at your hotel.”
    “He did.”
    “And you believed him?”
    “The man gave me soup for breakfast. How can I not believe him?”
    “Never take soup from strangers, O—always sage advice. Let’s not stand around. It makes me nervous.”
    I followed him to his car. “What makes you think Kim won’t have someone right behind you?”
    “He will. He already does.” We pulled onto a busy street. “But he won’t for long. These people are very sure of themselves, very sure we are idiots.”
    We turned left into a small alley, raced through the courtyard of an apartment complex, flew across a bridge, and ended up behind three small trucks in the parking lot of a blue-roofed market overflowing with people.
    “Out, Inspector. You’re going to do a little shopping. Don’t look around; go right inside.”
    “Am I missing something? I thought you worked for Kim.”
    “See you later.”
    Inside, the market was a crush of bodies. For a moment, in thefruit section, I was stranded next to the bananas. Bananas! I gawked at them. Since when did normal people even in the capital have bananas to eat? Then a man pulled on my arm and I broke through the masses into a small office. The door shut behind me.
    “You can wait here.” The man let go of my arm. A middle-aged woman with a baseball cap sat at a desk working a calculator. She frowned at the numbers. “Too many fucking zeros,” she muttered.
    “Busy place,” I said. It was a cinch I was trapped, that Major Kim would come through the door at any moment, with one of his tanks close behind.
    “Major Kim, if that’s what is worrying you, has meetings today.” The woman didn’t look up as she spoke. “He has a nine o’clock. Also, today is Thursday. He gets a