The Wandering Ghost (36 page)

Jill snorted.

“It’s true,” Otis continued. “He had a thing for you and he never liked the army much and he didn’t like the black-marketing any more than you did. So he was drunk and angry at the world and I kept backing away from him and his punches kept missing. He tossed a big roundhouse windmill punch at my head but by the time it reached where I’d been, I’d already moved. He lost his balance. But he regained it and he would’ve been all right. Then Warrant Officer One Mr. Fred Bufford showed up.”

Sergeant First Class Otis, like a true seasoned NCO, was still using Bufford’s proper title.

“Bufford was furious,” Otis continued. “He knew that Druwood was going to be a hardhead and snitch on the entire black-market operation. Bufford told him just that, then Druwood swung on
him
and they started to fight. Mr. Bufford did all right at first, with that long straight jab he has, but Druwood wouldn’t give up no matter how much punishment he was taking and somehow he got Mr. Bufford into a headlock. Weatherwax showed up and he jumped in and other MPs were helping.”

“You being one of them,” Jill said.

“No. I tried to stop them. I told them all they were making a big mistake. But there was no stopping Mr. Fred Bufford. He and the other MPs beat on Druwood unmercifully and then they started dragging him to the edge of the building. Druwood realized what was coming and he fought like a madman. Grabbing for handholds, screaming, cursing, his clothes being shredded, until finally four or five of them including Bufford and Weatherwax dragged him to the edge. Bufford managed to break Druwood’s grip on the cement and he shoved him off the ledge and tossed him over.” Otis paused, breathing heavily, the .45 still aimed at my chest. Then he continued. “A couple of the guys, including me, tried to grab for him but we were too slow. Druwood went over. Head first. And slammed into that Korean statue down below, that lion or monster or whatever it is. And we heard a crunch like you couldn’t believe. A crunch that would break your heart.”

Jill Mathewson’s fist quivered. I thought for sure she was going to pull the trigger. Then she said, “So, according to you, you’re innocent.”

“Yes.”

“But you let them lie about it. You let them take Marv Druwood’s body over to the obstacle course and pretend he had fallen there.”

“Bufford did that. They wanted to divert attention away from the grain warehouse. Away from the Turkey Farm.”

“Because of the black-marketing.”

“You know it.”

“And what about the Thousand Crane Vase, Otis? You and your girlfriend, Brandy set it aside for yourselves.”

Otis didn’t deny Jill’s accusation. “A man has to make some money in this world. The honchos here are stashing away fortunes. Where are they at oh-dark-thirty when I’m wrestling with a drunken GI or having my eyes scratched out by his pill-crazed business girl
yobo
? I’ll tell you where they are. Back in their hooches snoring and dreaming about the money that we make for them. That’s where. I’ve slept out in the rain and the snow and the mud for almost twenty years and I deserve something.”

“How many other vases have you moved?” Ernie asked. “How many antiques?”

Otis shrugged.

“And my partner and I,” Ernie continued, “were about to bust everything wide open. Even after we returned to Seoul you knew we could cause trouble. Which is why you sent Brandy to bring us back to Division, bring us back to Tongduchon, and send us to
mulkogi
chonguk
, to fish heaven, so you could take a bead on us and blow our brains out.”

The barrel of Otis’s .45 veered toward Ernie.

“I was just trying to scare you off.”

“Bull,” Ernie said. “If I hadn’t bent down to retrieve that rubber ball, the top half of my skull would’ve been history.”

“Drop it, Otis,” Jill growled.

Indecision flashed in Otis’s eyes. A group of demonstrators, carrying torches and clubs headed toward the Provost Marshal’s Office. The MPs in front had fled. Nothing stood between the enraged Koreans and what was left of the 2nd Infantry Division Provost Marshal’s Office.

Sergeant Otis must’ve realized that he couldn’t take down all three of us. There was no way out for him. His crimes would be exposed.

“Hold steady, Matthewson,” Otis said. “Hold your fire. I’m moving away. I’m moving slow and steady. Hold your fire and I’m no threat to you or your friends here.”

He dropped Colonel Alcott’s ledger to the ground.

“I’m a noncommissioned officer,” Otis continued, “and a good one. As an NCO, whether I been black-marketing or not, I have a job to do. I have my duty to attend to. You understand that? There’s a good girl. Slow and easy.”

Otis backed away from us, keeping his .45 aimed at my chest. When he was about twenty feet away he turned and stood still for a second, as if expecting a round from Jill Matthewson’s .45 to smash into his back. When it didn’t, he lowered his .45 to his side and started sprinting toward the Provost Marshal’s Office. He arrived before the demonstrators did and ordered them to halt. When they kept coming he raised his .45 and fired over their heads. The demonstrators screamed and dropped to the ground. Some of them fled. But about a dozen of them got up and threw stones at Sergeant Otis. Most of them missed. But a couple hit their mark. Otis flinched and then the demonstrators hurled more stones at him. He tried to fire while covering his eyes with his free arm but the round went high, and then some of them reached him. I heard his .45 clang to the blacktop and skitter away, and now Jill was running toward the demonstrators, firing her pistol into the air, shouting at them to stop. As if smelling blood, dozens more of them emerged around the cor- ner of the clump of pine trees and charged toward the Provost Marshal’s Office. Ernie and I ran after Jill, caught up with her, and dragged her back to the safety of the tree line.

As we did so, from where Sergeant Otis lay we heard the heavy thump of wood on bone. A final scream and then silence.

Reinforcements arrived. I climbed up on a low branch of one of the trees. Two-and-a-half ton trucks, maybe a dozen, pulled up behind the railroad tracks to the rear of the frightened KNPs. A ROK Army officer leaped out of the cab of the first truck and saluted Agent Sohn. After a short conference, with Sohn gesturing toward Camp Casey, the ROK Army officer nodded. He shouted orders and men started jumping out of the backs of the trucks. They fell into unit formations. ROK Army infantry, the White Horse Division, the best of the best. Vietnam veterans. Each soldier armed with an M-16 rifle. While standing at attention, they were ordered to don their protective masks. They looked like a hive of lethal insects. Within seconds, they marched past the grateful KNPs and formed themselves into one massive V-shaped formation. They fixed bayonets with a clang of metal on metal. Then the officer shouted an order and, pounding one foot in front of the other, the V-shaped formation started shuffling toward the main gate of Camp Casey.

I jumped down to brief Ernie and Jill on what I’d seen.

“Colonel Han,” she said. She ran through the crowd. Ernie and I followed.

As we approached Colonel Han near the quarter-ton truck, a few protestors hassled us. One of them blocked my way. I tried to push past and he shoved me. I shoved back. Just as his buddies were about to jump in, Ernie pulled his .45. He fired into the air. Startled, the men dropped back.

For just a moment, after the gunshot, the advancing hive of ROK soldiers halted. Warily, they searched the crowd. When they realized no gunfire was directed their way, they resumed their advance.

Colonel Han shouted at his followers to let us through.

When we reached him, Jill stood at his side.

I shouted at both of them. “It’s over. Those ROK Army soldiers are going to use whatever force is necessary to quell this demonstration. Blood will be shed. People will be hurt. Time to call it off, Colonel.”

“No,” Jill shouted.

“
No?
” Ernie mimicked. “What are you? Out of your mind? Those ROK soldiers mean business.”

“We’ve worked too hard,” Jill said, “and planned too long. The world has to know what’s happened here, that innocent children are being killed and women raped, and something has to be done about it.”

“Done? Like what?”

“Like what we planned.” She turned back to Colonel Han. Smiling beatifically, he patted her on the shoulder.

It was then that it hit me. I’m not sure why. It had nothing to do with what we were facing at the moment but maybe it was the depth of Jill Matthewson’s emotion that triggered all the contradictory information I’d gathered in the last few days to suddenly fall into place. Maybe her reaction was the last clue I needed. But I knew now and so I said it.

“You were there,” I told Jill. “The night Pak Tong-i died.”

She looked at me, so did Colonel Han, so did Ernie, all of them waiting for me to continue. I did.

“You slipped back into Tongduchon and maybe you had a key but somehow you gained entrance to his office.” I was staring directly at Jill now, daring her to deny my words. “When you found him there you tried to force a full confession out of him. About how he’d provided women to the Second Division honchos for years, about how he’d set the women up, letting them think they’d be dancing or performing, although Pak knew they’d be raped by whichever officer took a fancy to them. And you wanted his records, to document the years of black-marketing that had gone into paying for all these mafia meetings and other boys-will-be-boys excursions. You were too close to Kim Yong-ai to let it go. You wanted to prove it all to the world. But there wasn’t enough there. Pak was cagey. He kept few records. But he was so frightened that he told you about Colonel Alcott being deathly afraid of being cheated by Koreans, or by Bufford or Weatherwax so that he kept meticulous records of all black market transactions. When you questioned Pak Tong-i, you had to threaten him with your .45. He was a weak man, a man who never exercised and ate too much and smoked too much and drank too much, and suddenly something inside of him went bust. His face flushed red, he couldn’t breathe and you knew the symptoms meant heart attack. When he died, you shoved him into the closet, closed it, and exited Kimchee Entertainment without being seen. That’s what happened, Jill, isn’t it?”

The ROK Army suddenly halted. The commanding officer shouted more orders and repositioned his forces. They broke into smaller groups, then reformed again. Now five V-shaped formations were pointing right at us. Then they started, once again, their slow forward shuffle.

“He deserved it,” Jill snarled.

Even Colonel Han flinched at the sound of her voice.

“They all deserve it,” she continued. “Paying for sex with girls who are just out of middle school. Girls who still have their hair bobbed, for Christ’s sake, because they finished the ninth grade only weeks ago. Now those same girls are made-up like whores and dancing in sequined outfits and these middle aged men with wives and children in quarters back on army bases in the States grab them and paw them and make them giggle and then stick their tired old pricks inside that soft virgin flesh. And the men laugh about it. And boast. And don’t even seem to care that I’m a woman and despise every one of them, and then they have the nerve to make comments about me. About my butt. About why a woman would be an MP. And they ask me dumb questions, like if I’ve ever burned my bra, and there were so many times”—Her fist tightened into knots—”so many times when I came that close to pulling out my .45 and blowing their fuck-ing brains out.”

“Jill,” Colonel Han said. He placed his hand gently on her shoulder. Her face relaxed and she turned to him and smiled.

“It’s time, Jill,” he said. “Time for us to do what we planned.”

“Yes,” she said.

Jill stepped away from Colonel Han and stared at me once again. She pointed at the ledger in my hand. “You have the proof now. I know you two guys. I respect you. You’ll make sure that the truth comes out. And one other thing. It’s true that I roughed Pak Tong-i up a bit. But when I left him he was still breathing. Maybe later, God forgive me, he died of a heart attack. I’m not proud of that.”

Colonel Han shouted something to a group of men who’d been hovering nearby. They stepped between me and Ernie and the quarter-ton truck. Colonel Han climbed back on top and helped Jill up. Then he started to address the crowd.

Exactly what he said, word for word, has been transcribed from tape recordings made by protestors who were there. The transcribed speech has been passed around Korea and has now, in translation, been passed around the world. What he said, in effect, was that Korea must control its own destiny. It was time for Koreans, both in the North and the South, to reject foreign influence, to expel all foreigners, and to reunite. The first step was to take back Korean sovereignty, both on the land and in the courts. Once he’d made these points he said that Koreans were strong enough to defend themselves and, once the Americans were expelled, if the northern communists refused to reunite, then the soldiers of the Republic of Korea should march north and force reunification. Blood would be shed, people would die, but to prove his sincerity he was going to do more than just talk. He was going to act.

Most of the speech was in language too sophisticated for me to follow. But the last part, when he said he was going to act, I understood.

He and Jill Matthewson leaped off the truck, strode past the destroyed Camp Casey main gate, and marched across the open pavement toward the advancing ROK Army troops. The crowd was silent. Jill Matthewson pulled her .45.

“No!” I shouted. Frantically, I lunged forward. Both Ernie and the men assigned to us by Colonel Han held me back.

“No!” I shouted again, because what they were about to do seemed perfectly obvious to me.

Jill held her .45 aloft and then aimed it at the KCIA man standing behind the row of KNPs. She popped off a round. At that range, twenty or thirty yards, the round flew high but the reaction of the KNP brass was immediate. They fell to the ground. Now Colonel Han stepped in front of Jill. He pulled his pistol and aimed it at the advancing ROK troops. They didn’t wait for an order. A fusillade of M-16 rounds slammed into Colonel Han’s body. He didn’t twirl in the air as he would’ve done if this had been a movie. His body slammed to the pavement as if he’d been sucker-punched in the chest by a twenty-foot-tall giant.