The Shadow of Arms (27 page)

“If you had no ration cards, why didn't you just go to the Americans and demand that they pack up everything in the PX and give it to you? Why the hell were you snooping around the barbed wire fence, you fools. Just wait, boys, I'll get you your money back; I will, even if I have to sell my body. By the way, I hear you signed some kind of confession statements, is that right?”

“The Americans asked us to write our names in Korean, so we did.”

“You didn't know what you were signing, did you?”

“No, sir. It was filled with squiggly letters in English.”

“I see. Goddamn bastards just did whatever they liked.”

Yong Kyu finished his report and saved the carbon copy for himself. Then he made a separate report to file with Krapensky and attached to it a request for refunds of the prices of the goods, eighty and one hundred twenty dollars respectively.

“You boys can go now.”

“It's all right to go now?”

The private was bewildered, unable to believe how easily he escaped from the disaster.

“Why, you'd rather crawl back down into that cell? Listen, after an operation, you need a good rest so you can be ready to fight again, right?”

“Sure . . .”

“Right, so I'll call the rec center for you boys. They'll send a Jeep so you don't have to walk back. I'll recover the money and send it to you.”

Yong Kyu telephoned the recreation center and asked them to send a driver. Then he gave the handwritten report to the girl in the next room and asked her to type it up, since Miss Hoa was off that day. When the document was finished he took it back over to the investigation office. This time Lukas was there along with the sergeant in charge. Yong Kyu laid the report down on the desk. Lukas picked it up, but the sergeant spoke without even glancing at the document.

“No use bringing me any more paper now, the case is closed and done with. We've already taken proper measures, and what are you going to do about it?”

“I'm not finished with it yet,” said Yong Kyu, stifling an urge to punch him. “Sergeant Lukas, is this the way you get statements from suspects? Our soldiers couldn't read your language, and that's why they signed it.”

Lukas replied in clear Korean. “Don't get excited. The guards at the PX checked them and reported to us. They broke regulations, no ration cards, and you know we can't tell then what is black market and what isn't.”

“Up to that point, proper measures were taken. But isn't it only fair that when the goods are returned you give them their money back? Your job is to seize the goods and hand them over to us, that's all. We punish them and we are entitled to recover the money from you. The money they paid and the punishment they get are two different things. I'd like you to send this report to the chief of the investigation office.”

The American sergeant pointed at Yong Kyu with his finger and shouted, “Sergeant, stand up straight when you speak. I was in Korea for a long time too. I know you people very well. You make trouble whenever you come into our zones. Your soldiers try to make illegal profits by buying and reselling PX goods. We don't give back money used for that. Maybe then in the future the Koreans will stop coming into our PXs for their black market dealing.”

“I heard you loud and clear. Just now you said we come into your areas and do nothing but stir up trouble. I'll report your words to higher authority and make an official complaint. We are here because you asked us to come. Your government wanted us to join you to save the lives of young American men. We have nothing to do with this filthy war. True, we've sold ourselves for the paltry sum of money you threw at us, and now here we are. But don't forget this, those two soldiers just barely survived combat operations set in motion by a command from your headquarters. They were on the front instead of you. The money you snatched and won't give back is blood money!”

“Shut up, you son of a bitch!”

The American sergeant sprang to his feet and was pounding on the desk. He stuck his nose in Yong Kyu's face and growled, “I'm warning you. Don't interfere with us.”

“You must return the two hundred dollars. If you don't, I'll ask your president himself to pay it back.”

It was Lukas who separated the two men. He led Yong Kyu into another room. He filled a paper cup with some coffee from an aluminum coffee pot and handed it to Yong Kyu. He offered a cigarette. Yong Kyu plopped down in a chair.

“He has very strong feelings about your kind of people,” Lukas said.

“And I about his.”

“Let me give you some tips. He's got some dirt . . . evidence.”

Yong Kyu darted a glance at Lukas. Then, pretending to have heard nothing, he went on smoking. Lukas hesitated for a moment before going on.

“Your sergeant, he's peddling too much beer. And he's doing it with civilians.”

“I know it and the captain knows it, too. Look, Lukas, you should understand all about it. Our duty is to control black market dealings that violate military regulations. But we know that, depending on the local situation, there are times that you people, too, aid and abet black market dealers, or plunge into dealing yourselves. We also know that you have earmarked funds in your budget for local hires or welfare expenses that are used to run such undercover operations. It's the same with us. We can't ask you for intelligence or covert operations money. If that sergeant out there keeps on letting his personal prejudices get in the way of our cooperation, I'll dig into the dirt in your side's dealings down to the minute details.”

“Don't misunderstand. The problem is that your sergeant is working with civilians and third-country nationals. They've been a headache for us for a long time. The scope of their dealings is much too broad. So it's not easy for us to keep track of them. We can't tell when they might be making deals with the wrong people for dangerous goods.”

“All right, you want us to expel the civilians, is that it?”

“No, you don't have to go that far. We just want them to scale back the range of their transactions.”

“That's for us to handle. So, you also want our team leader to be split from them, no?”

“That's the idea.”

“Within a week we'll have the scope of their dealings reduced. We've been working on that already, too. This is a different matter, but based on my report and the refund request I submitted, you'll give the two soldiers their money back, won't you?”

“Once they check the inventory records tomorrow afternoon, they'll send the money to the investigation office. Then we'll hand it back to you.”

Yong Kyu rose from the chair. Now the dispute had been settled. And all the points of difference were in the open. They were the ones who had picked a fight, perhaps deliberately to poke at sore spots on his side. As a result, Yong Kyu now had confirmed what he had suspected, that the clumsiness of the team leader was an open secret. He shook hands with Lukas and spoke once more as he left the room.

“Tell your sergeant I apologize. It wasn't a personal thing. And I'll not forget that we should never interfere with each other's duties.”

Yong K
у
u
returned to the office. The driver from the recreation center had just arrived.

Yong Kyu asked the private, “When's your leave over?”

“We're returning to our unit tomorrow afternoon, sir.”

“I see. They'll give back your money, but not until the day after tomorrow. So I'll advance it to you tomorrow. And, you, over at the rec center there are quite a few boys with ration cards, right?”

“Some of the boys in the army band unit have cards.”

“Tomorrow, after you get back from going to Turen with me, be sure to buy a TV and a tape recorder for these boys, OK?”

“Shit, why not?”

The two soldiers saluted once again, their posture still that of penitents being disciplined.

“Hey, enough cringing. No need for that. Take it easy and take care.”

They left and Yong Kyu was sitting in the office by himself. The curtains were flapping in the stiff wind off the South China Sea. To maintain the business at Turen, he had to keep a close eye on the activities of the American side. He remembered the advice of Blue Jacket Kang when the duties were transferred: transactions in combat supplies was the most delicate issue, and neither the Americans nor the Koreans shared their top-secret intelligence on that. The most hidden part is also the most important; as long as we have thorough information on that, the Koreans will be safe to plunge into any transaction in Da Nang; and that is precisely the most vulnerable area for the Americans and the Vietnamese. Yong Kyu had n
о
t forgotten a single point.

On Monday at twelve-thirty Yong Kyu went to the Y-junction by the garbage dump where Route 1 split to head for Turen and downtown Da Nang. He waited there, wearing American jungle fatigues, a work hat, and his sunglasses. Children passed by, from time to time shouting “
Pilluktang
!” They must have taken him for a Filipino who had enlisted in the US Army.

He looked about for a while, then walked into a noodle shop. He bought a can of coke and sipped it sitting at a table. The only other occupants of the shop were the owners, an old Vietnamese couple. The old man approached Yong Kyu and babbled something in Vietnamese. Then he repeated “Cigareh, cigareh.” When Yong Kyu took a pack out of his pocket and offered him one, the old man said “beaucoup.” Many? The old man wanted to buy the pack.

Yong Kyu waved both hands and said, “
Toi kai dor gong ban
.”

He refused to sell his pack, but the old man kept staring at him for a long time as if he could not believe what he had heard. At last, a truck slowly pulled up to the junction and stopped. Yong Kyu climbed inside.

“It's a little late . . .”

“The supply convoy passes here between twelve-thirty and twelve-forty.”

“How do you know?”

“We used to have our supplies delivered here.”

“And now?”

“We go directly to the docks at the supply unit.”

“Do you get deliveries every day?”

“No, only once a week.”

Yong Kyu had not thought of that place. Besides, it was almost in the heart of downtown. He recalled there were a few old barracks beside a rundown old factory and next to them the air force warehouses were lined up. It functioned as a relay point between the Turen supply warehouse and the brigade, and also as a liaison office where Korean personnel dispatched to Da Nang were issued their equipment and supplies. Only the American armed forces were excluded. The quantity of goods passing through may not have been so much, but it was an important location nonetheless.

The downtown supply unit was located only one block from the piers. That's right, he recalled, all the beer for the military was unloaded on those piers. He'd forgotten the biggest route for beer. The Vietnamese consumers had acquired a taste for Korean canned beer, and in the market it brought almost the same price as the American top-of-the-line brand, Hamm's. Maybe the American sergeant back at the American forces investigation office was peeved about the high price of Korean beer on the black market.

If so, maybe there were cross lines to siphon beer out of the regular distribution channels.

In the brigade, Koreans only drank Korean beer. But beer was not classified as food, so it was outside the ration planning quotas. The amount consumed was unpredictable, varying greatly depending on the random distribution of the elbow-benders. PX goods were always paid for in dollars, and then resold for dollars on the black market. But Korean beer, whether it went straight to the brigade and made its way back out, or slipped into the black market on the way from the supply unit. It has a hot trade. It was the only item that could easily be traded as well as sold to convert profits into American military currency.

Just like with the specialty foods like almonds and peanuts, even when they leaked out, since they were purchased and sold for dollars, the ones suffering the loss in the end would be the Vietnamese city dwellers who consumed them. The war supplies, on the other hand, were bought and eaten by the families of Vietnamese merchants, bureaucrats, and military officers. It was like the delicate web of a deep-sea food chain. The item that had been hardest for them to get a grip on was none other than the Korean beer constantly streaming in from the piers.

“Why didn't I think of it before?” murmured Yong Kyu aloud.

The driver, not privy to his train of thought, said, “Think of what, sir?”

“Oh, never mind. Hey, do you get the beer for the rec center from the PX?”

“No. Why drink American beer when we have our own? When a holiday for the forces is approaching we load a large quantity at one time. The brigade also gets theirs from the supply detachment downtown.”

Absorbed in trying to compose his thoughts, Yong Kyu did not even notice the plumes of red dust approaching from the south on Route 1. As the driver started the engine, he turned to the left quickly and saw the convoy's escort Jeep approach with its headlights burning. A platoon of infantry marching along the edge of the road with its sandbag walls on either side presently disappeared, enveloped in the dust. The parade of vehicles made a terrible clatter as they turned at the Y-junction, keeping a wide spread between each. When the last Jeep passed by, they pulled out and fell into the file. They had no trouble passing through the east gate of the Turen supply warehouse. The truck pulled up in front of a B-ration warehouse. Leon, who had been on the lookout for them, gave them a wink as he stood there with his ledger in hand.

“So you survived, kid.”

Leon shook his head wildly. “Whew, you're one crazy bastard. I did nothing but sleep all day yesterday.”

They sat side-by-side in the air-conditioned warehouse and talked about women.