A Corpse in the Koryo (35 page)

Trying to track him would keep them busy enough so they'd miss what else I had left out. It wasn't much.

It was quiet until dawn, not peaceful, but the heavy silence that weighs on the hours, so that you crave the smallest sound besides your own breathing, crickets or even just the wind to show that the night is rolling unbroken, that it will end. When the sun finally came through the rear window, I peered outside. The dirt path from the back door went down a small slope W.-M

to a slender, solitary birch tree. A man slumped against it, his legs across the path and his feet, bootless, on the grass beyond. He gazed toward the mist lifting from the hills, only his eyes never blinked. A breeze came up, making the tree's top branches sway and the leaves dance with a sudden, nervous energy that scattered the light across the ground. I must have stared a long time, but not because I needed to be sure. From the moment the sun came through the window, I knew it would not be Kang.

The girl's book I left where it was, and the flowers, too. As I shut the front door behind me and turned toward the station, I thought I spotted a line of geese heading south. They were flying straight as an arrow, high in an autumn sky that was as blue as anything I'd ever seen.

January 2003, Prague

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Things in North Korea are never as they seem for Inspector O.

Called in to solve the city's first bank robbery, O finds himself entangled with a beautiful bank manager, a sharp club owner, and a mysterious man in a brown hat. They all have agendas, none of which involve O solving the robbery.