Free Bamboo and Blood by James Church

Entebbe.

    “Don’t let it worry you,” I said. What happened to his hair would get sorted out after we landed. “Probably just some dirt in the fuel line. It usually clears.” I watched him pale a little more before poking his shoulder. “Look, would I be here if I thought there was any danger? Don’t worry. This plane is indestructible. If it hasn’t crashed by now, it never will—that’s what you have to keep telling yourself. Don’t pay so much attention to sounds. You have to train yourself not to hear things sometimes. Like the thudding of Cossack hoofs.”

    “Very stoic.” His voice was a little strained; maybe he was low on those silk pills he took every morning, or whatever it was that kept his voice so damned smooth. He craned his neck to look out the window.

    “Do you want to switch seats?” I said. “You’ll feel better if you don’t have to look at the earth. It confuses the horizon, makes you dizzy when we bank or go bump.”

    “Not at all. I just hate landings. Do you mind if I shut my eyes and sweat for the next twenty minutes until we’re on the ground?”

    “Suit yourself.” The landing gear made a loud thump, and the pilot pushed the plane into attack mode. I checked to make sure the wings were attached, and spent the rest of the way down wondering how big a crowd from the special section was already assembled on the tarmac.

    5

    The next morning, Pak sat at his desk and pulled his ear. “This is complicated. No, I’m wrong, it’s not complicated. That’s too simple. It’s unbelievable, completely unbelievable.” He shook his head. “I still don’t believe it. Tell me you are joking, Inspector.”

    “I stick to facts, and the facts are these. The first group, in the front of the plane, didn’t know the second group was in the back, and vice versa. They come from separate parts of the Israeli government. They don’t communicate, very secretive; one hand doesn’t know what the other is doing, if you can believe that sort of thing happens.”

    “So what are we supposed to do? Keep them apart? Bring them together? Put out name cards in the hotel dining room so they don’t get mixed up and share a table with each other?” Pak motioned for me to sit down, but I didn’t want to. If I sat, we’d start talking about things we shouldn’t be discussing. Inevitably, the subject of how bad things were in the countryside would come up, people moving without permits to find food, bodies on the side of the road, trains with old women riding on the roofs of the railway cars and falling off. We’d talk, one thing would lead to another, and we’d both be depressed for the rest of the day.

    “I’m not going to worry about their seating arrangements,” I said. “Let whoever signed for them at the airport clean up the mess. We have one visitor to look after, and that’s enough for me.”

    “Even one is too many. I don’t have the manpower for visitors of any stripe. I don’t have any manpower at all. You’re supposed to be putting together a file on that woman. It should have been ready a week ago. I haven’t even seen a draft, not a word.”

    “I’m not the one who okayed the orders for me to fly to Beijing in the middle of everything.”

    That was unfair; Pak hadn’t wanted me to go. “People do write on airplanes, you know, Inspector. They have those little trays that come down. I’ve seen them.”

    “I thought you didn’t like to fly.” I started edging toward the door.

    “I don’t. I had to board a plane at Sunan once to search for something.” He turned the memory over in his mind. “Never found it.”

    “Maybe some people can write on airplanes; not me. I can’t even think on a plane. Something about the noise and that sense of being disconnected from the earth. I’m not one of those people who likes to hurtle through the air.”

    “You sleep?”

    “Sleep? Don’t be crazy. I concentrate.” Pak looked dubious. “Theengines need a lot of