Inspector O 04 - The Man with the Baltic Stare Read Online Free PDF

thought, and opened the top drawer of the bureau. There were two new shirts in it, both of them my size. The wood chips had been put in a neat pile to one side.
    “Well, what do you know about that?” I said, and lay down. The next thing I knew, the phone woke me.
    “Good morning, Inspector. This is your wake-up call.”
    “Did I ask for one?”
    “Someone must have. It’s early. Take a shower and have some coffee, you’ll feel fine.”
    “Tea. I don’t want coffee. I want tea.”
    “Breakfast is on the second floor. They have plenty of tea. It doesn’t start for two hours, though.”
    “You mean it’s only four thirty?” I gave up looking for the light switch and went to take a shower. This was low-level harassment, and I knew there would be more where that came from. Nothing too rough, but enough to make clear who was in the lead and who was supposed to trot behind. Trot behind for what, I still didn’t know. I’d left the restaurant before finding out what the “small problem” was. Just as I stepped under the water, the phone rang again. Nice, I thought. I got out and picked up the phone. “Go to hell.”
    “Good morning to you, too, Inspector.”
    “What do you want, Major?” I put a towel over the TV screen.
    “Simply wondering if you slept well.”
    I slammed the phone down.
    Twenty minutes later it rang again. “Is this a better time? I thought we could have breakfast together in my office.”
    “Do I have a choice?”
    “The driver is waiting out front. See you soon.”
2
     
    The office was large and deceptively plain, the sort of plain that comes only with careful thought. Nothing was there by chance, everything had a purpose, and the purpose of the whole was to make it clear that this was a place in which central levers of power were located. Here, the room announced, was not merely the appearance, not simply the trappings, but power in pure form. Pure power didn’t need elaborate decoration. A simple blade cuts clean. All right, I said to myself, we’re making progress—we know the man has power beyond making people nervous.
    Major Kim sat behind a wooden desk so highly polished thatI could see his reflection. It was a solid piece of furniture, quite heavy from the looks of it. The message was clear enough. The desk wasn’t going anywhere, and the man behind it was here to stay. The color of the walls was muted, the lighting subdued. The only jarring note I could see was the chairs. They were all different—different colors, different styles. In front of the major’s desk was a brown chair, high backed and without arms. It looked uncomfortable, and my guess was it was supposed to be. Slightly behind the brown chair and off to the side was one with a green velvet seat and a low wooden back. Oddly, it was turned away from the desk, facing a group of folding chairs that sat in a semicircle facing each other. Farthest back, next to the wall that held the room’s only window, was a lonely stack of black plastic chairs.
    The man who had picked me up at the hotel had the air of a duty driver—cheerful, talkative, saying nothing. It was at least an hour before dawn, the streets were deserted, but every streetlight was on. We drove past apartment houses that had not been there the last time I was in Pyongyang, turned into a tunnel I never knew existed, and came out in a compound at the base of a wooded hill. There was a long walkway to a three-story building that had a heavy tank parked on either side. The barrel of the tank on the left followed our progress to the entrance. The driver escorted me past Security, up to the third floor, and all the way to Kim’s door. He knocked twice and then left me alone. More psychology. Did I want to wait until a voice told me to come in? Or did I want to push the door open on my own? I walked in. To hell with psychology.
    Major Kim was pouring a cup of tea. “Ah, good morning to you, Inspector. I see you’re wearing a new shirt. It fits, I hope.”