The Wandering Ghost (22 page)

“Chon Un-suk
mansei
!” one of the protestors shouted through a bullhorn. Chon Un-suk ten thousand years! Which didn’t make much sense since she was already dead.

Some of the students held four-foot-high photographs of the young middle-school student, framed in black.

What must’ve been the entire contingent of Camp Casey MPs stood in front of the main gate, wearing fatigue uniforms and riot helmets, holding their batons at port arms. More MPs stood behind them with short-barreled grenade launchers cradled in their arms, for launching tear gas into the crowd. Finally, as if he was Camp Casey’s last line of defense, the twenty-foot-tall MP stood with his pink-faced grin, staring idiotically at the entire proceedings.

So far, everything was peaceful.

A KNP contingent stood along the railroad tracks, opposite the main gate, behind the protestors. They also wore riot helmets and thick chest padding and wielded long batons that they held in their hands impatiently. All in all, there were almost as many MPs and KNPs as there were protestors, although the cops were much better armed.

Ernie and I crouched in the center of the student protestors.

“If the MPs spot us out here,” Ernie said, “we’re toast.”

“What choice do we have?” I answered. “We were sent up here to find Jill Matthewson. That’s what we’re doing.”

“We’ll lose our CID badges.”

“We’ll tell them we were working undercover.”

“Eighth Army will never buy it.”

“Screw Eighth Army.”

Ernie shook his head. “You’re changing, Sueño.”

Maybe he was right. I thought about it. One of the protestors screamed through a megaphone at the top of his lungs in rapid Korean.

Finally, I replied. “I’m changing,” I told Ernie, “because finding Corporal Jill Matthewson should’ve been an easy assignment. Instead, at every step of the way someone’s tried to stop us. They stopped Private Marvin Druwood and then they stopped the booking agent, Pak Tong-i. Permanently. And last night, they tried to kill us. Why?”

Ernie shrugged.

“We have to find out,” I said.

“We could go talk to Brandy.”

“We’re too hot to enter the Black Cat Club. Or even the bar district. The KNPs are probably watching.”

“They’re watching us here.”

“They’re watching the crowd. Not us. This is the last place they’d expect to find us.”

“This is the last place
I’d
expect to find us.”

“It’ll only take a few minutes. Then they promised to lead us to her.”

“They might be lying.”

“Chon Un-suk’s mother believes them.”

Ernie shrugged again.

The leader of the protest shouted into his megaphone, speaking in Korean. Occasionally, he paused and the crowd shouted back their assent. Finally, he switched to English, turned, and directed his words at the main gate of Camp Casey.

“Now,” he said. “One of your own will speak to you.”

He motioned for me to stand. Ernie stared at me, wide-eyed. I rose to my feet. Like Adam accepting the apple from Eve, I grabbed the megaphone.

10

I
’ve often wondered what it’s like to jump out of an airplane.

To take that final step into the abyss, with the wind rushing by and birds gliding below, and then to fall and twist and float free, away from all restraint, gliding through clouds. Airborne troopers do just that at least once a month to keep their parachute status active and thereby collect an additional fifty-four dollars per month in jump pay.

When I stood in the middle of that crowd and the young Korean man handed me the megaphone and I held it up to my mouth and I started talking, I suddenly knew what it was like to leap out into eternity.

I’m not sure exactly what I said. Ernie recounted it to me later. Something about every country being able to control its own destiny and every courtroom being accountable to the people of that country. It wasn’t much and it was garbled, but the overriding point of my little speech—as far as the U.S. Army’s concerned—was that I’d participated in a prohibited demonstration. It didn’t matter how minor, or how dumb, my participation might’ve been. Such participation, in and of itself, was a court-martial offense. Of course, so was returning to the 2nd Division area of operations after we’d been ordered not to. So I was just adding one sin onto another.

But what riveted my attention while I held the microphone was not the line of helmeted KNPs lining the railroad tracks, nor the adoring attention of the demonstrators who gazed up at me, nor even the helmeted American MPs barricading the main gate of Camp Casey. What riveted my attention was Lieutenant Colonel Stanley X. Alcott and Warrant Officer One Fred Bufford, both of whom were standing in fatigues before the main gate behind their protective line of MPs; both men perched atop the hood of a U.S. Army jeep. Colonel Alcott, realizing who was speaking, stared at me with his mouth hanging open. Fred Bufford, meanwhile, smirked. A broad twisted smile. Satisfied. As if to say that everything he suspected about me had finally been proven true.

The huge MP statue looming behind the main gate seemed to have changed its expression from bland idiocy to disbelief. Disbelief, apparently, that I could do something so stupid. Stupid, maybe. But it was my only chance of obtaining a lead on the whereabouts of Corporal Jill Matthewson. As a cop assigned to a mission, I do what is required. Regardless of what Stanley Alcott or Fred Bufford thought.

When I finished talking, the crowd of demonstrators roared in approval and then a Korean speaker took over the megaphone and the students holding the photographs of Chon Un-suk started chanting and parading through the crowd. The chanting grew louder and I ducked down next to Ernie. Everyone ignored us. The crowd swirled around us, picking up speed, picking up the volume of its outraged roar. Finally, some of the demonstrators stooped and grabbed rocks from the side of the road and, with wild abandon, launched them at the main gate of Camp Casey. A few of the stronger young men managed to reach not only the main gate but behind it all the way to the MP statue, where the rocks bounced off the big dumb MP’s chest and tumbled uselessly to the ground.

One of the vegetable vendors was surrounded by students and I soon realized why. She had smuggled in a pile of rocks in her cart. Plenty of ammunition. And then the students became organized. When every one had a rock, they began chanting, “Chon Un-suk. Chon Un-suk.” And then, timing it by counting down from ten, the students in unison launched all their missiles, like a battalion of ancient Carthaginians armed with slings assaulting the glory that was Rome.

The MPs roared in rage. The students grabbed more rocks and once again began their chant. KNPs along the tracks conferred. Another volley of rocks sailed through the air toward Camp Casey. Again the MPs roared in anger but this time the KNPs along the railroad tracks formed up in a V shape and, on the count of three, charged.

Pandemonium.

Some of the students were overcome with a senseless heroism and counterattacked, running pell-mell into the riot police. Others crouched to the ground in panic. None of them ran. Only Ernie and me. We ran away from the crowd, away from the charging KNPs, away from the main gate of Camp Casey. But in our case, the damage had been done. I’d been witnessed by a field-grade officer participating in an unauthorized political demonstration. The word would be out. We were here, even though we weren’t supposed to be, and every MP—and KNP—in Division would be searching for us.

Once inside the bar district, we stopped in an alley and tried to catch our breath. I noticed that there didn’t appear to be any people on the street—no GIs, no business girls—but no KNPs or MPs either.

“The place is deserted,” Ernie said. “Now’s our chance.”

“Our chance for what?”

“The Black Cat Club,” he said. “Brandy.”

He was right. Using the back lanes, we wound our way toward the back door of the Black Cat Club.

The old crone who ran the Black Cat Club was there along with a few of her business girls but no GIs. The GIs had been restricted to the compound in anticipation of today’s demonstration. I asked for Brandy and of course they denied that she was here. They had no idea where she was. Since torture was out of the question, Ernie and I performed a quick check of the hooches out back and then searched the Black Cat Club itself.

No Brandy.

We stepped behind the bar. Ernie poured himself a shot of bourbon. I found a ledger. Drink chits is what it recorded. Most bars kept a similar accounting. When a GI buys a girl a drink, she earns credit: a few additional
won
that turn up in her end-of-month paycheck. Who records the chits? At the Black Cat Club, apparently, the bartender does. I studied the handwriting. Quirky, leaning to left, blocklike. Exactly like the handwriting on the note Brandy had shown us.

I stuck the ledger under the fluorescent bulb beneath the bar and spread the note next to it. Ernie peered down.

“Aah,” he said. Even though he couldn’t read Korean
hangul
script, Ernie could see the resemblance to Brandy’s distinctive style. She’d been the one who had written the note that drew us to fish heaven. She’d set us up to be killed.

We could’ve continued our search for Brandy and when we found her we could’ve beaten the truth out of her. But our main mission was still to find Corporal Jill Matthewson. Ernie and I talked about it. Whoever had broken into Pak Tong-i’s office before us might’ve found a lead to Jill’s whereabouts and that meant, if they hadn’t already found her, they might do so at any moment. The whole purpose of my speaking at the demonstration was to obtain the cooperation of the students who had promised to lead me to Corporal Jill Matthewson. So we loitered in the northern end of Tongduchon near the little hooch they used as their hideout. But by late afternoon we realized that waiting any longer was useless. The KNPs had located the student leaders’ hideout. Ernie and I spotted them coming and made ourselves scarce. Within an hour, dozens of Korean cops would be swarming over the dilapidated little hooch, searching for clues that would allow them to prosecute the students under Korea’s voluminous antisedition laws.

Ernie and I retreated to the only other place where we might be able to make contact with the students. The residence of Madame Chon. No dice. The KNPs weren’t searching her home—out of respect for her wealth and connections—but they had stationed armed guards at her front gate.

“We’re up kimchee creek,” Ernie said. “Trapped in the Division area, no leads to Jill, no way to contact the student demonstrators. We’re right back where we started. Except worse.”

I didn’t have an answer for him. Not yet.

We sat in a Korean teahouse on the western edge of town, a half block from the MSR, the route that led from TDC to the Western Corridor. Not far from where Chon Un-suk had been run over.

“They have us both nailed for disobeying a direct order,” Ernie said. “To wit, returning to the Division area after being ordered to leave. And they’ve got you nailed for participating in a prohibited demonstration. It’s over. The best thing for us to do is police up my jeep and return to Seoul. Tomorrow morning we report to work and take our lumps.”

Ernie was saying it, and saying it forcefully, but I knew he didn’t believe it. Private Marvin Druwood was still dead. Corporal Jill Matthewson was still missing. We couldn’t leave now. We couldn’t let the bastards win.

A frail young Korean waiter in black pants, white shirt, and black bow tie offered another cup of overpriced instant coffee. We both declined. Bowing, he removed the porcelain cups from in front of us. After he walked away, I said, “He can’t wait for us to leave.”

“Him and everybody else in TDC.”

“Understandable,” I said. “We’re rocking their boat.”

“To hell with their boat.”

“Yeah. That’s what I say. If we find Jill, we find out why she left and how she managed to come up with two thousand dollars and, given what we’ve uncovered already, we might be able to put a case together.”

“Against who?”

“Against the Division honchos. The guys who run the mafia meetings. The guys who are black-marketing their butts off in TDC. The guys who covered up Marvin Druwood’s death.”

“How can we prove they’re black-marketing?” Ernie said. “All the evidence was destroyed in that fire out at the Turkey Farm.”

“Destroying evidence. That’s what’s gone on since we arrived. Destroying the evidence of how Private Druwood actually died, destroying the evidence of what those two young MPs were actually doing when they ran over Chon Un-suk, destroying the evidence of black-market activities that had been supporting the mafia meetings. It’s all about destroying evidence. You’re right, Ernie. And if we return to Seoul now and ‘take our lumps’ like you said, they’ll win. And Jill Matthewson better stay in hiding.”

“You don’t know that she has evidence that’ll help us. For all we know, she might be black-marketing herself. In it all the way up to her freckled nose.”

“Could be.”

He studied me, with that cagey look in his eye that he gets when he thinks he’s reading me like a book. “But you want to ask her, don’t you?”

I nodded. “Yes. I want to ask her.”

“So do I.” He inhaled the pungent, coffee-laced air and then let his breath out slowly. “Okay,” he said. “It’s still Sunday. We still have a few more hours. How do we find her?”

I called the waiter over and borrowed a stubby pencil and a sheet of brown pulpy paper. After spreading it on the tabletop, I drew a map. As I penciled in the names of towns and villages and rivers and mountain ranges, I realized that I knew more about this part of the country than I thought I did. It was a beautiful part of the world. With lush river valleys and craggy peaks and Buddhist temples and shrines to ancient patriarchs. And then I filled in the DMZ and the military base camps and then the brothels. Suddenly, my map looked as if it were breaking out in an adolescent rash.

Ernie and I barely fit into the seats.

The bus was designed for Koreans so each seat was narrow and legroom was nonexistent. We twisted and turned and, as best we could, folded our legs under the seats in front of us. The middle-aged men in suits and the young people in blue jeans and fancy jackets ignored us. But the old ladies who climbed aboard the bus with massive bundles balanced atop their heads couldn’t take their eyes off of us. Foreigners on a Korean bus! We might as well have been space aliens.

Within a few stops after Tongduchon, all seats were filled and the aisles were jammed full of countryfolk ferrying themselves and their children and their belongings—including a crate of chickens and even a small goat—from one village to another. We passed ROK Army compounds and a few military convoys, but along the way no one stopped us.

At one particularly bumpy stretch of road, Ernie felt compelled to rise and offer his seat to one of the country women who was having trouble keeping her balance in the aisle. I did the same and so we were stuck in the aisle on the swaying bus, our heads bowed because of the low ceiling. It was a long ride to Bopwon-ni, Legal Hall Village. Over an hour because of all the stops and all the loading and unloading of passengers and gear.

When we finally arrived, night had fallen. Ernie and I hopped off the bus and strode directly toward neon, into the Pair of Dragons beer hall, the same place we’d stopped last night on our way to TDC with Brandy. We marched to the bar and ordered two draft beers.

In Tongduchon, when Ernie said that we were right back where we started from, he was wrong. We had information. Quite a bit of it. All we had to do was collate it and make sense of it and then use it to formulate a plan of action.

What we knew for sure was that Corporal Jill Matthewson had left Tongduchon twenty-four days ago and, as far as we could tell, she’d never returned. That meant that wherever she was, her needs were being met. If she was dead, of course, those needs would be zero. If she was alive but being held captive, it would be up to her captors to meet her needs. Or not, as they saw fit. But if she was on her own and free—as I certainly hoped she was—she was meeting her own needs. That is, paying for a roof over her head and food and drink and a place to launder her clothes and bathe her body. To do that, she needed a job.