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thing didn’t bother me too much. It just wasn’t what I would normally label “fine.”But I also didn’t want Pak to know. He had enough to worry with. This was my business, old business, unfinished business. If there was a problem, it was mine to solve.

    Pak’s too frequent visits went on for several days. It got on my nerves. Someone constantly asking you if everything is all right, it can get wearing. Pak didn’t think things were fine, I could tell. He thought things were going to end up in a train wreck. Pak knew plenty, he had good sources, and they must have been warning him. After being surprised once, he was going to make sure it didn’t happen again. He must have dug up every contact he ever had to check what was going on. He wouldn’t come out and say anything though. That wasn’t how he did things. Each time, after I told him things were fine, he’d shake his head and walk back to his office, clucking his tongue.

    It was a little curious that he never asked about my meeting in the Sosan coffee shop. I figured there must be a reason he didn’t want to know, something more than his well-honed instinct against delving into things that couldn’t bring anything more than another basketful of bad news to an already bad situation. If he asked, when he asked, I already knew what I’d tell him.

    “So, what happened at the Sosan between you and your no-longer-dead friend?” He made sure to be looking out my window when he finally asked, so I couldn’t see the expression on his face.

    “Nothing.” I’d practiced saying it out loud. It still didn’t sound convincing.

    “Is that a fact? You just sat there and laughed about old times and drank hot water?”

    “I certainly didn’t laugh.”

    “And him?”

    “He sneered, mostly.” Which was true. “I still can’t figure out why he wanted the meeting.” Also true.

    “Not good.” Pak had come away from the window and was rearranging a pile of papers on my desk. “Whatever he’s up to, it’s not good, we can assume that, but what else? He must have asked you a few questions.”

    “That’s what I was expecting, questions. At least some probing for what we knew about the foreigner. But no, nothing like that. There isone thing, though. He said he wanted to get in touch with some of the people from our operation, the one he and I were on when everything went wrong.” I glanced at my desk. Pak had put everything in two neat piles. I’d known where every piece of paper was before. The latest Ministry reports had been on the edge of the desk closest to the window, in roughly the order they came into my office; interrogation reports were more or less in order of priority along the the opposite edge of the desk, nearest the door; laterally filed field reports from other sectors in the city were pretty much everywhere else. “You might as well take those piles to your office,” I said. “I’ll never be able to find anything anymore.”

    “Why? Why did he want to get in touch with those people?”

    “How should I know? I told him I had no idea where anyone was, and he sneered.”

    “Did he ask for another meeting?”

    “No. But I’m sure of one thing.”

    “And what is that, Inspector?”

    “I’ll bet we haven’t seen the last of him.”

    2

    Winter was never busy. In bad weather, people stayed off the streets if they could. The worse the weather, the more they stayed indoors, even if they had no heat. We may have been the only ones in the city who were glad when it snowed heavily. Fewer people outside, less chance for trouble—everybody knew it. Anything that happened on the street pretty quickly got thrown our way. But if something went wrong in an apartment, it was rare for us to be called. Even if people phoned, Pak’s inclination was to tell them to settle it themselves. Have the neighborhood committee deal with it, he’d say and hang up. The neighborhood committees liked that sort of thing; it bolstered their sense