I WAIT OUTSIDE the dojo for Sergeant Kim to leave. It is evident now that I am not as clever as I think I am. Taylor has me under surveillance and picked up on my recruitment of Hawk. And if Hawk is working for Taylor the whole time, Taylor knows all about ROK.
Kim d rives a Lincoln Town Car. I follow him. He lives twenty minutes away in a section that has become almost completely Oriental in the last ten years. He pulls into his driveway, gets out, walks to the curb, and waits for me. He invites me into his home. I’ve never been there before. I know that his wife is dead. A young woman, perhaps twenty, greets us at the door, in properly obsequious Confucian fashion. She and Kim speak in Korean. He does not introduce me. We go sit in the living room and she brings a bottle of reasonably good Scotch. Again, he says nothing about her, whether she is a daughter, a relative, a maid, a woman that he brought over mail-order from Korea. I tell him what has happened. She brings us cheeseburgers. They’re excellent, thick and juicy, topped with sharp cheddar, sliced dill pickle on the side. “I hate kimchee,” Kim says. “You like kimchee? I got some. You can have.”
“This is fine,” I say.
“Gourmet cheeseburgers,” he says. “You want recipe?”
“No, that’s alright.”
“Hartman, he still have Sakuro Juzo with him?”
“Usually.”
“Ahh . . . You want beer? Soda?”
“Same as you.”
“Hartman the emperor. Juzo the dragon. Taylor the enemy general. Magdalena is the treasure. The memo is the MacGuffin. That’s what Hitchhock call it. You like thrillers? Hitchhock my favorite. Like a game.”
“Sure,” I say. Except that I love her.
“Sure,” he says. “A game.”