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fences?”
    This sounded very much like a knife cutting through flesh. A little soon, I thought, for him to make the move to the negative. He should have waited another round; he still had a few problems with pacing. Maybe they didn’t spend much time on that sort of thing in the South. “Apparently, this is the moment for me to chop wood for you,” I said. “Or maybe it is the day to polish one of the tanks?”
    Kim looked at my bowl. “You finished with the soup? I’ll have the dishes cleared.”
    “Yes, let’s bring in the trained monkey again.” We were done with the feint about the camp job, and he’d let the subject of my grandfather drop. So why did they send the ferret to fetch me from the mountain? What was so important that they needed me here?
    The dishes were whisked away, and the first rays of sunlight came through the window behind me, glinting off a group of framed maps on the opposite wall. Somehow, they missed Kim’s eyes. Maybe he repelled sunlight, I thought. We sat in silence. Kim pushed a button and the shades on the window went down halfway. “I hope you don’t mind,” he said. “But I find the morning sun this time of year a little hard to take.”
    Simple, I thought. Have Michael and Paul move the fucking desk.
    Kim opened a file and began to leaf through it. He stopped with the last page, which he held flat on the desktop so I could see that it was a list of names.
    “Tell me, Inspector,” he said finally. “Do I have your cooperation, or don’t I?” He had his pencil poised over the paper.
    “No.” I stood up. That wasn’t the real question, and I didn’tplan to wait another hour or two for him to get to the main point. He had something he wanted me to do, and I had no intention of doing it. If he thought he had some power over me, let him try. “If there will be nothing else, I have to get to the hotel to pack my things.”
    He made a mark on the list, a small
x
next to a name. “Returning to the mountain, Zarathustra?” He crossed out one name near the top, then another. “I can have a car waiting for you. It can’t be done today. How about tomorrow? About noon?”
4
     
    Downstairs, I realized I didn’t know how to get back to my hotel from here, because I didn’t know where “here” was. The duty driver was nowhere around, and no one offered me a ride. When I stepped outside and started down the walkway, I felt a tank gun barrel following me. Small-caliber weapons aimed at my back might not register, but a tank barrel—always. At the end of the walkway, a jeep sat idling, with a man in an unfamiliar uniform and a red armband at the wheel. He indicated I should get in, drove at high speed through the tunnel, and pulled over as soon as we emerged.
    “End of the line,” he said.
    “How far are we from my hotel?”
    “Beats me,” he said. “This is your city, not mine. And as far as I’m concerned you can have it.” He put the jeep in gear and roared back through the tunnel.
    I tried to orient myself, but there were no landmarks on the horizon to help. Off to the right, several new, tall buildings were going up. In front of me, an entire block had been leveled. A brief walk around convinced me that I was in the far western part of the city, some distance from the Taedong River and a long way from any subway stop that could get me back to the central district, close to my hotel.
    When west, walk east. Maybe I’d run across a traffic cop whom I could ask for directions. They didn’t know much, but they could usually figure out which direction the river was. As far as I could tell, no one was following me. It didn’t really matter; in fact, it might be better if there was. If I got too lost, my tail might get tired and give me a ride back to the hotel.
    I wasn’t in a hurry, I didn’t need to be anyplace particular, and the weather was good for a stroll. If I had to be in Pyongyang, a bright October morning was as good a time as any. The trees along the